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9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded
August 14, 2008
We’ve just updated our data on navigational / branded search in the UK for our new research report, Managing Your Brand Online. During May 2008, 88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were branded in nature, up from 81% in 2007 and 66% in 2005.
A quick refresher on the methodology that was used to create the above chart: we carried out an analysis of the top 2,000 search terms in the UK over the same 12 week period ending in May during 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, categorizing them into branded / navigational terms (e.g. ‘bebo’, ‘ebay’, ‘bbc’ – i.e. searches where there was a clear intention to search for a brand or reach a particular website) and non-navigational terms (e.g. ‘flights to spain’, ‘free games’, etc.). As we’ve highlighted previously, this trend towards more navigational / branded search at the ‘head’ of search terms contrasts with more sophisticated generic search behaviour in the long tail.
Consumers are using search engines to navigate to recognized websites, so what are their favourite online brands? The table below lists the top 10 search terms in the UK for the 4 weeks ending August 9th. Facebook, which last month overtook eBay to become the third most visited website in the UK, is currently the most searched for brand in the UK. It is joined in the top 10 by four other social networking / web 2.0 related terms: ‘bebo’, ‘youtube’, ‘you tube’ and ‘myspace’. Combining the two YouTube related search terms the video sharing website would place higher than Bebo, which also correlates with this analysis.
Of the five remaining terms, three belong to retailers – ‘ebay’, ‘argos’ and ‘amazon’ – while the remaining two belong to the BBC. You’ll notice that table above includes paid and organic rates for each of these terms, a additional feature that is included in our new Search Intelligence tool. The terms ‘ebay’, ‘amazon’, ‘you tube’ (although noticeably not ‘youtube’) are the only three in the top 10 that generate a significant proportion of paid search clicks, with the remaining seven relying almost completely on organic traffic.
The table below lists the top 10 paid search search terms (i.e. those that received the largest number of paid clicks from a search engine) over the same period. By stripping out the brands that rely primarily on organic search, this list is quite different from the one above. A combination of high overall search volume and a high paid rate pushes ‘ebay’ and ‘you tube’ to the top of the list, while Facebook, Bebo, the BBC and MySpace all fall out of the top 10.
Whereas there were only 3 retailers in the previous list, this time there are 7 retail related terms, with ‘ebay uk’, ‘currys’, ‘john lewis’, ‘pc world’ and ‘paypal’ entering the paid search top 10. This makes sense, when you consider the competitive nature of the retail market. Our analysis showed that retailers increased their rate of paid brand search to protect themselves from competitors and affiliates following the recent Google trademark changes. We will cover the paid search as part of next Tuesday’s Can You Have a Happy Christmas During an Economic Downturn? webinar. You can register for this online seminar, which will start at 12:00 UK time on August 19, here.
If brand is more your thing, then you can download a copy of or new report, Managing Your Brand Online (written in conjunction with our colleagues at Experian Integrated Marketing) here. And, as always, we urge you to follow Hitwise UK on Twitter to keep up with the latest Internet data and trends.
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:00 AM
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In Categories BBC | Branding | Google | News and Media | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Social networks | Video
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Comments
You're right Arno, the growth of toolbars etc. means that many people now use these to navigate rather than type in the URL or bookmark teh site. However, I'm not sure if its down the laziness so much as efficiency - it takes less keystrokes / clicks to type brand name into a search engine / toolbar and click the I Feel Lucky button that is does to type the full URL.
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | August 14, 2008 09:47 AM
This seems a bit misleading. Sure 90% of the top 2000 searches are navigational but what about the rest of the searches? What percentage does the top 2000 searches make up of the overall search volume?
Posted by Patrick Altoft | August 14, 2008 04:39 PM
Thanks for the comment, Paul.
I'll admit to a slightly attention grabbing title, but hopefully it's clear from the text that I'm talking about the top 2,000 terms. During this time persiod these accounted for 21.6% of all UK searches, although their combined share is constantly increasing.
This is really only half the story, as you have correctly indentified. As the same time that people are searching more for their favourite brands, at the other end of the tail they are becoming more sophisticated in how they search for non-branded terms. So, less searches for 'flights', more 'cheap flights to barcelona', and so forth. This is explained in more detail in this post: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2007/12/long_tail_evolution.html
Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | August 14, 2008 04:53 PM
I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of users search behaviour. ComScore research I remember seeing at SES 2008 backed up this, in terms of users undertaking more searches but looking at less pages per search.
I would suggest however that the search engines have a part to play in such trends. Greater relevancy in terms of results have had a knock on effect in terms more targeted search behaviour.
Posted by Peter Young | August 14, 2008 08:25 PM
Does anyone know the top ten search terms for Youtube UK users?
Posted by Daisy Norris | August 20, 2008 08:31 AM
Hi Daisy, here are the top 10 search terms sending traffic to YouTube in the UK over the last 4 weeks:
1. youtube
2. you tube
3. utube
4. u tube.
5. youtube.com
6. you
7. www.youtube.com
8. bebo
9. facebook
10. www.youtube
As you can see, most of the these are navigational. Removing all of the navigational terms the top 10 generic search terms sending traffic to www.youtube.com over are:
1. i kissed a girl
2. top 40
3. uk top 40
4. angus thongs and perfect snogging
5. kid rock
6. wwe
7. high school musical
8. beijing 2008 olympic games
9. katy perry
10. harry potter trailer
I hope that data is useful. Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | August 20, 2008 09:47 AM
Mmmmm. So you're telling me that people in the UK are logging onto Youtube and typing in either 'Youtube' or 'I kissed a girl'.
Bit strange that, shouldn't it be something like 'X Factor' or 'Westlife'?
Posted by Daisy Norris | August 21, 2008 02:41 PM
Daisy - 'i kissed a girl; has been the number one song in the UK for a number of weeks, so all of thise people will be searching for the video. A lot of music searches now go to YouTube.
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | August 21, 2008 03:53 PM
I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of users search behaviour. ComScore research I remember seeing at SES 2008 backed up this, in terms of users undertaking more searches but looking at less pages per search.
Posted by clubpenguin | May 25, 2009 07:27 AM
Hm seems like a lot of people search for websites instead of taking the time to type in the url.
Posted by Kids Games | September 8, 2009 07:11 PM
What intrigues me is why so many people search for "facebook" or "youtube" while they could also type in the adress followed by.com (or.co.uk) to get where they want to go. Maybe it's just laziness as search engines are often (integrated in) people's startpage when they go online.
Posted by Arno | August 14, 2008 09:38 AM