Legal Research

Canadian versus American Searchers

Simon Chester on the Slaw blog has linked to some interesting observations from Google about hte differences between Canadian and American searchers (from CP).

"Google is now looking for a new head of industry, software engineers, administrative assistants and other staff to help take advantage of Canada?s base of extraordinarily plugged-in Internet users."

"I think we recognize there?s an incredibly engaged Canadian audience, that Canadians are different from other online consumers or other people who are online."

"The fact that Canadians search twice as much as Americans, according to comScore data, is unbelievable. Canadians are (each) searching (an average) of 143 times a month ? those aren?t small differences or small changes, that?s a pretty significant and quite powerful difference."

"Studies also suggest Canadians spend about a third more time online than Americans, Lister said, while YouTube, Google?s video streaming site, is more popular in Canada than in any other country."

"We?re clearly massively engaged and that?s one of the reasons Google is so interested in Canada ? we look at this Canadian audience and it is on balance one of the most engaged audiences around the world."

Of course this is depsite the fact that new Google features are introduced to Canada after the U.S. and things like Google Street View lag, etc. Canada also waits for things like Kindles, Tivo and iPhones.

Then again, the reason might be that Canadian advertisers spend less on online that U.S. advertisers. Someone has to pay the piper and advertisers are the real client.

Read more: http://www.slaw.ca/2009/11/30/canadian-searchers-are-different/#ixzz0YORlJzVK

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on November 30, 2009 (boomark / email).