“Porcelain Goat Figurines”, Or Why Most Searches Contain Multiple Words

I’m constantly trying to educate my search clients on the benefits of “drilled-down” keyword phrases.  If you own a website that sells porcelain goat figurines, you don’t want to make the single word “goat” your target keyword phrase.  You’ll have a hard time ranking #1 for that.  But if you drill down to the phrase “porcelain goat figurines,” you’ll have a much better chance at owning the search results. 

Well, now there’s some empirical evidence to help support my argument.  ClickZ says that more people use multiple words in their searches.  It breaks down like this:

• Two Word Searches – 31.9%
• Three Word Searches – 27.0%
• One Word Searches – 15.2%
• Four Word Searches – 14.8%

So there you have it.  Not only is it harder to rank for one-word phrases, but it turns out that very few search engine users are even using one-word phrases.  Search users are growing up, tuning in to the power of drilled-down keyword phrases. 

I’ll even give you a little homework to prove this point.  In a few days, after the engines have time to index this very post, go to Google and type in the one-word phrase “goat.”  See if you see this blog anywhere in the rankings (hint:  you won’t).  Then type in “porcelain goat figurines” and see if we come up… I’m betting we do, and probably near the top.  Then let me know in the comments below what you find. 

UPDATE: Less than an hour and 15 minutes later… and this blog post now ranks number one on Google for “porcelain goat figurines.”  So… I think that proves my point to some degree.  It also proves that if I actually had some porcelain goat figurines to sell, I could maybe make some money. 

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