Brand Searches Lead to Other Web Sites

DMNews reports people who search for a company's brand name don't always go to the brand's web site, and instead visit the web sites of its competitors, affiliates or price-comparison sites because those sites rank the highest in results. This and more details were obtained from Hitwise's Search Brand Management Report.

The report tracked 30 leading online brands in the travel, retail and business and finance categories in February. Where 85% of the searches resulted in consumers visiting the brand owner's web site, it lost 15% in potential sales from searchers going to other sites.

Marketers now need to be even more savvy about buying keywords on their brand names as consumer search engine usage increases in searching for brands. Hitwise found 75 of the top 100 search terms across all categories, in February, contained brand names - an increase of 17% from February 2005.

I'm not too familiar with search engine marketing, but after reading this I'm beginning to think I need to be.

Filed In: DMNews Hitwise Marketers Brand Search Engine Keywords