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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Mortgage calculators up, 100% mortgages down
June 16, 2008
When Abbey last month became the last big bank to abandon 100 per cent mortgages, it did so in the face of the credit crunch and falling demand from buyers. As the graph below shows, the volume of UK internet searches for a portfolio of 80+ variations of terms related to 100% mortgages (the top terms for the 4 weeks up to May 31st 2008 were ‘100% mortgages’, ‘100% mortgage’, ‘100 mortgage’, ‘100 percent mortgages’ and 100% mortgages northern rock’) has fallen by 38% over the past three years. After renewed interest early in January and February of this year, we saw a 27% decrease across April and May, fuelled by the media coverage of the current UK property market crisis
Whilst first-time buyers continue to be priced out of the market, current mortgage holders are left trying to manage their finances and find the best deal as interest rates rise and fixed rate deals come up for renewal. One way that Hitwise data nicely illustrates this behaviour is the increase in searches for the term ‘mortgage calculator’, as shown in the chart below.
In a portfolio of 300+ non-branded mortgage related terms, the term ‘mortgage calculator’ overtook the top ranked term ‘mortgages’ in October 2007, and has continued to pull away at top ever since. It now accounts for 10% more searches than the second ranked term, showing a two-year increase of 32%. Other popular calculator related terms are ‘mortgage calculators’, ‘mortgage overpayment calculator’, ‘buy to let mortgages calculator’ and ‘bbc mortgage calculator’. The latter terms sends the majority of its traffic to the BBC Homes website, the broadcaster’s advice site - which does indeed include a mortgage calculator.
BBC Homes also receives the second highest amount of traffic from the general term ‘mortgage calculator’, behind the FSA’s Money Made Clear site. The public’s demand for impartial mortgage advice is further emphasised by the fact that four more information or advice sites appear in the list of top 10 sites receiving traffic from the search term ‘mortgage calculator’ (illustrated in the table below). In addition to these independent sites, the top 10 also includes three mortgage providers: HSBC UK, Nationwide Building Society and Alliance and Leicester.
The FSA’s position at the top of the rankings is achieved in the main by a large amount of paid search activity: 72.5% of all its traffic gained from the term ‘mortgage calculator’ in the 4 weeks up to 31st May 2008 came from paid search. This was nearly 8 times more than www.emortgagecalculator.co.uk, the next largest recipient of paid traffic, which drew 9.4% of its traffic through paid search.
Paid search does not always guarantee a high position however. Nationwide only sits one place above Alliance and Leicester in these rankings, despite receiving considerably more paid search from the term ‘mortgage calculator’. 83.1% of Nationwide’s traffic from the term came from paid search, compared to just 4.0% for Alliance and Leicester, implying that it is better optimised for the term.
Of the banks on the list, HSBC currently receives the most search traffic from this term, with 94.6% of its ‘mortgage calculator’ search traffic coming from paid activity. When HSBC launched its campaign in April to encourage fixed rate borrowers to switch to its rate matcher product we saw a 193% increase in searches for the term ‘hsbc mortgages’, nicely illustrating the close affinity between offline marketing and online search activity.
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Posted by Robin Goad at 03:00 PM
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In Categories Economy | Financial Services | Government | News and Media | Search
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Comments
i think it is because internet users just get used how to search, long phrases gives more accurate results.
In this case, mortgage calculator is different from "mortgages", but i think when people search after: "mortgages" they don't want to find banks where to get mortgages, but articles, advices, calculations for mortgages.
Posted by mortgage rate calculator | July 29, 2008 02:35 PM
We in fact get more traffic from a similar term, home loan calculators - this must be specific to Australia
Posted by Loan Market Group | September 8, 2008 12:42 AM
I appreciate this rather useful post and suggest to use its output in the practice, for instance, using online mortgage calculator on the website of Fizber.
Posted by Nike | June 19, 2008 02:20 PM