April 28, 2008

Google delivers over a third of all UK traffic – trademark changes will have a significant impact

The top 100 Google Internet properties sent over one third of all Internet traffic to websites in the UK during March 2008. A custom category consisting of the 100 most visited Google-owned web properties in the UK accounted for 36.55% of upstream traffic to All Categories of websites in the UK during March 2008, up from 30.19% in March 2007.

So what impact does this have on UK brands following Google’s trademark changes, which take effect on May 5th (i.e. next Monday)? When Google made its announcement a couple of weeks ago, I highlighted the growth of branded / navigational search in the UK. Since then we’ve carried out some additional research that has helped us to quantify the potential loss for sites that rely heavily on search traffic from their own trademarked brand(s). In order to do this, we compared data from the US – where Google already allows non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms – with the UK.

Using Hitwise search data we identified to top 100 most searched-for brands in the US and UK during the 12 weeks ending 12/04/2008. We then looked at what proportion of these brand searches ended up at the brand owners’ websites, and what proportion went to a competitor or other site. The results were very interesting: as chart below illustrates, 91.8% of brand searches ended up on the brand owners’ websites in the UK, compared to just 84.2% in the US.

That is a gap of 7.6%, equivalent to millions of searches every day. Of course, there may be other factors at play other than paid search, but our belief is that the ability to bid on trademarked brand terms is the primary reason for this gap. For example, we compared the branded search traffic for Expedia, a brand that is strong both in the UK and USA. 95.7% of people searching for ‘expedia’ in the UK ended up on an Expedia property, compared to 88.6% in the US – a 7.1% gap, and very similar to the 7.6% gap we identified in our research above.

We also looked at the brand term ‘new look’, which is not trademarked in the UK. Because of this, New Look’s competitors and affiliates are currently bidding on the term – meaning that the clothing retailer is already in the situation that its trademarked competitors will find themselves from May 5th. As a result, New Look receives just 83.66% of traffic from searches for its own brand – significantly less than its trademark protected competitors, and much closer to levels experienced in non-trademark protected America than the UK.

So, considering the importance of Google and the potential impact of these changes, what are the most popular Google-owned websites in the UK? The most visited Google property is Google UK, which - with a market share of 7.77% of all UK Internet visits in March - was also the most visited website in the UK last month. Google UK was also the website that sent most traffic to other websites during March, accounting for 27.48% of upstream traffic to all categories. This was followed by Google USA, which had a market share of 1.70% and accounted for 4.43% of all upstream traffic in March.

YouTube is the third most visited Google property, accounting for 1.13% of all UK Internet visits in March, while the UK version of the video sharing site ranked sixth. The popularity of Web 2.0 applications is also highlighted by Blogger, which is currently the seventh most popular Google property and the number one website in Hitwise’s Lifestyle – Blogs category. Google’s webmail service, Gmail, is the fifth most popular Google property, accounting for 0.37% of UK Internet visits in March, and 0.98% of upstream traffic to other websites.

Google is also benefiting from the growth of universal search. The fourth most visited Google property is Google Images UK, which accounted for 0.58% of UK Internet visits in March. However, the site is even more important as a source of traffic to others sites, accounting for 1.27% of all upstream traffic sent to other sites in March, making it the third most important Google property in terms of upstream traffic. Other Google search sites in the top 10 include Google Maps and Google News UK.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the impact of Google’s trademark changes, we hosted a webinar on the topic last Friday. You can listen to a recording of the 30 minute session here.

Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
Posted to Google | News and Media | Search

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