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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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22% increase in paid brand search rates following Google’s trademark changes

June 19, 2008

The top online brands in the UK have significantly increased their rate of paid brand search following the recent changes to Google’s trademark policy on May 5th. Before Google’s changes took effect (4 weeks ending 12/04/2008), 9.2% of the search traffic that the top 100 online brands in the UK received from their top brand term came via a paid listing on a search engine. However for the his figure went up to 11.2% - equivalent to an increase of 22% - during the first four weeks after the changes took effect (4 weeks ending 31/05/2008).

Increase in Uk paid brand traffic following google trademark changes retail travel telecoms banking.png

As the chart above illustrates, three of the four major industries that we analyzed have increased their rates of paid brand search. Most drastically, the top travel brands in the UK have increased their paid brand search rate from 18.4% to 26.6%, the largest increase of any sector. The retail industry also saw a significant increase in paid brand search activity from 11.3% to 16.2%, despite a number of high profile ‘gentleman’s agreements’ amongst some of the largest names in the industry who had agreed not to bid on each other’s brands terms. The telecoms industry also experienced an increase, although there was a moderate decrease from 4.8% to 4.7% amongst the UK’s major banks.

When Google announced the changes, many assumed the amount of Internet search traffic that brand owners receive from searches for their own trademarked brand terms would decrease because competitors and affiliates could now bid on these terms. Indeed our own analysis of the differences between the UK and US markets seemed to point in that direction. In fact, there was only a tiny decrease - from 91.8% to 91.3% - in traffic to brand owners’ websites from searches for their own brand names following the changes.

So, UK Internet users have stayed loyal to their favourite brands, but at what price to the brand owners? It seems that the top brands in the UK have chosen to increase paid search activity on their own brand terms rather than lose traffic to competitors or affiliates. Obviously what happened during the first month may not be representative of what will happen on the long term. We’ll be keeping an eye on how this pans and will issue updates if we see any major changes. In the meantime, last week I presented a webinar describing the impact in more depth, and you can listen to a recording here.