July search term biggest movers are here! What terms drove the greatest query volume spike? Let’s take a look at some of the fastest growing terms since this time last year to get a better idea of the trend in consumer search interest.

Findings:

  • Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, and YouTube have seen explosive traffic growth in the past year and to follow suit their query volumes have grown substantially
  • While portal properties Yahoo! (141MM Uvs) and AOL (55MM Uvs) haven’t significantly grown in traffic, they have seen 50%+ increase in brand queries since last year
  • No sharp traffic trends in webmail properties Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, but brand terms for both of these properties have risen sharply

Overall, brand term use is on the rise. Why, might you ask? One answer is that consumers are becoming more dependent on search for navigation (typing a brand into the search bar instead of navigating directly to the brands website). It’s not that consumers don’t know the names of these brands – they’re using the exact brand name as their search query as you can see below.

Taking a quick look at the top 5 keyword referrals (data taken from site profiles on compete.com) to some of the domains mentioned above, we see that navigational search nearly always encompases the top 5 keyword referrals to the sites (and a large portion of search referral traffic).

Search (as a means of navigation) is on the rise, at least in terms of traffic to some of these big online brands. Did internet surfer laziness take over (‘www.’ and ‘.com’ became too hard to type)? Are consumers showing more engine loyalty/trust in their engine’s results? I’ll admit I’m one of them.

Check back next month to see how this trend continues to take shape.


Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     


Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.
  1. Juli B

    Do you have any data regarding the proliferation and use of search engine toolbars embedded in user browser windows? That could have something to do with this phenomenon, don’t you think?

  2. Dental Clearwater

    I figured that facebook would take the cake, however I didn’t think it would be this much. Honestly, facebook is really a wonder to me.

  3. Facebook application developer

    This was so expected! Facebook topping the leader board is no surprise. Craig list being second best did shocked me, but on second thoughts it is leading the advertisement industry.

  4. Facebook Application Development

    Thats not strange. Its quite obvious that most popular social networking websites are growing rapidly great.


Have something to say? Leave a Comment

Get the comments RSS feed, instant notification of new comments

Latest Blog Posts:


Nov 20: Startup-Watch: A Closer Look at Etsy.com
Nov 19: Visa and the NFL team up for another season
Nov 18: Droid Really Does
Nov 17: October Search Market Share Update: Most gain in volume but only Google gains share
Nov 16: Casinos Need to Continue the Digital Evolution
Nov 13: The Myth of Advertising Decay
Nov 12: What’s More Important to You: Bandwidth or TV?
Nov 11: Who’s ready to bring clicks to bricks?
Nov 10: The “Easy to Read” Secret of Students
Nov 9: Halloween: An Experiment in Retail Blitzing
Nov 6: Dicing into Facebook Ads
Nov 5: “Game Over” for Wii?
Nov 4: Want a Tip about Podcasting? Digital 180 Speaks with Tippingpoint Labs’ Chief Strategy Officer
Nov 3: More Castrol Traffic No Fantasy
Nov 2: Digital 180 Speaks with Espresso’s Managing Director Marta Kagan
Oct 30: Apple Having a Little Fun
Oct 29: HTC Poised to Grow as Smartphone Market Expands
Oct 28: Getting The Most Out Of Compete PRO : Keyword Destination Reports
Oct 27: Walmart and Amazon declare war : Online Retailers Fight for Book Sales
Oct 26: Clicking Their Way to Home Improvement: How Consumers are using the web in home improvement projects