With the on going debate on SEO vs SEM vs Social, a recent study by Forrester Research released in July 2013 sheds some very interesting light on how consumers find websites The study was conducted in 2012 and show the fast rise of social search
- 54% of consumers find websites through natural search results, up from 50% in 2011 but still 7% less than in 2010
- Social networks are the second-most preferred discovery resource, with 32% using them in 2012, up from 25% in 2011 and 18% in 2010.
- 50% of 18-24 year old and 43% of 24 to 32 year old are using social media as their main internet discovery resource
- Links are the third important means of website discovery, with 28% saying they found websites from links on other sites, down from 31% last year.
- Just 18% of those surveyed said that they use ads for website discovery, an improvement from 2011, when paid search was the least popular form of website discovery, with only 8%
- One-third of Americans are using Facebook and Twitter for discovery.
