Hawley Editorial Feb. 18, 2007

"How many hobbyist use goggle to expand their knowledge? How many people use it as their sole information on koi?" Aquitori asked.

Well I'm pretty big on using google and measuring how well I can get the word out on a subject such as koi politics at ZNA So Cal, Maine's ban on koi, Aussie consideration of the KHV disease to kill of carp, and so much more. But to answer Aquitori directly, I like http://scholar.google.com for finding info on koi-carp, KHV, SVC, and other specific scientific oriented information.

I’d also like to know the answer to the broader question of how many people use search engines to actually search for koi oriented info? Supposedly there are approximately five billion searches in the U.S. each month. Among those searches are people looking for a variety of information related to koi, koi varieties, koi-ponds, water gardens, AKCA, ZNA, specific clubs, individual hobbyists, etc, etc. Of those billions surely only a fraction of a percent search for koi related info, but then what do they look for specifically? I get a kick out of working on “search engine maximization” orienting content to key words (which came first the subject or the key word?). In fact everything we are writing here should be logged and cached in google, but Koi-Bito does seem to have some problem in that regard as I don’t find it as prominently as some other forum content amongst various searches.
Anyway that is my two cents along with:

Background:
By most services that measure search engine performance that I read Google searches account for about half of all searches. Nielsen NetRatings figures for January reflect this trend with three billion searches at Google a 50.8% overall search share for that month (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070123.pdf). There are a variety of other resources you can find on the subject such as www.searchenginewatch.com. Research firm S.G. Cowen & Co. claim those using Google are more likely to have incomes over $60K/yr (http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/12/06/HNgoogleuserstudy_1.html). I’ve seen questionable analysis at ZDNet suggesting 53% of Google users are male, but the rest of their demographic spread across the various major search engines doesn’t seem plausible.