We analyze the transitions from external search, searching on web search engines, to internal search, searching on websites. We categorize 295,571 search episodes composed of a query submitted to web search engines and the subsequent queries submitted to a single website search by the same users. There are a total of 1,136,390 queries from all searches, of which 295,571 are external search queries and 840,819 are internal search queries. We algorithmically classify queries into states and then use n-grams to categorize search patterns. We cluster the searching episodes into major patterns and identify the most commonly occurring, which are: (1) Explorers (43% of all patterns) with a broad external search query and then broad internal search queries, (2) Navigators (15%) with an external search query containing a URL component and then specific internal search queries, and (3) Shifters (15%) with a different, seemingly unrelated, query types when transitioning from external to internal search. The implications of this research are that external search and internal search sessions are part of a single search episode and that online businesses can leverage these search episodes to more effectively target potential customers. 
External to internal search: Associating searching on search engines with searching on sites