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Search is increasingly rewarding established brands and monopolies, while smaller sites face challenges competing.

SparkToro analyzed 332 million Google queries to better understand how people use the search engine. Here are the key insights:

Search Intent:

• 51% of searches are informational, seeking facts or knowledge.
• 33% are navigational, directing users to specific websites.
• 15% are commercial, exploring products/services without immediate purchase intent.
• Only 0.7% are transactional, targeting purchases or sign-ups.

Branded vs. Generic Searches:

• 44% of queries are branded (e.g., “Amazon,” “YouTube”).
• Branded terms have higher search volumes, but generic searches remain dominant in diversity.

Search Trends:

• Entertainment leads search topics (25%), including movies, celebrities, and games.
• Other significant categories include education, health, and finance, while adult content is only 3.6%.

Concentration of Demand:

• The top 10K query terms account for 46% of total search demand, while the “long tail” (terms with <11 searches/month) represents just 3.6%.

Search Behavior:

• Google is often a post-discovery tool—users search after identifying a need, with discovery shifting to platforms like social media and YouTube.

Zero-Click Dominance:

• Google’s direct answers and AI overviews dominate high-demand categories, impacting traffic for external sites.

Brand Presence:

• One-third of searches are navigational, reinforcing the importance of managing branded search results as a key part of reputation.

Learn how to diversify your strategy to focus on alternative discovery channels at SparkToro.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new family of multimodal generative AI models—Amazon Nova—at the re:Invent conference.

The Nova family includes 4 text, image, and video generating models; Micro, Lite, and Pro are available now, with Premiere set to drop in early 2025.

Nova models are fast, multimodal, customizable, and 75% less expensive than other best-in-class models.

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Let’s get it on the calendar.

We’re still thinking of Coke’s “Holidays Are Coming” campaign, which resurrected a beloved spot with so much AI that people felt empty inside after watching it.

Brands big and small are still thinking about it, too. The ensuing blowback is an important lesson about the public’s dynamic palate for AI.

Just in time, Zevia’s new “Break From Artificial” spot explicitly ribs Coke with amped up AI tropes— weird slow-mos, freaky hands, uncanny animals—to position itself as the real soda among artificial competitors.