Interactive Return has released a sneak preview of some interesting stats on Irish search engine usage. Some extracts from the forthcoming release:

81.3% of those surveyed use search engines every day
80.26% said that they use Google, and 11.75% Yahoo!

73.03% use Google.ie, and only 15.35% use Google.com. 11.61% weren’t sure.

61.02% of those using Google.ie are mainly searching using the web function and 38.98% mainly search pages from Ireland.

78.35% of people either clicking on the top 5 results or the results on the first page; which for most people is up to 10.

29.14% of those surveyed said that they click on sponsored links “almost every time” or “quite often”.

25.70% said that they found sponsored listings “somewhat” or “very” trustworthy, while 33.92% said that they don’t trust them at all or not that much.

Sample size was 500. Full stats will be released at Search Marketing World 2009.

I’m moderating the International SEO panel, and sitting on the Duplicate Content Panel. If you’re coming along please say hello! If not why not? There are some tickets still available – see the site for details.