Search for Loans up 6% at expense of Mortgages

UK online searches for loans saw a 6 per cent rise on January levels totalling 966,202 in July, according to the latest independent research from leading specialist search and social marketing agency, Greenlight. According to the report, 'Retail Banking Issue 9', those for mortgages, which in January accounted for the lion's share of retail banking-related searches, dropped 14 per cent. It was likewise for credit and debit card and bank account-related searches, which decreased by 7 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively.

The report profiles search behaviour in the retail banking sector. It analyses which brands, retailers and review sites were the most visible in both natural and paid media results and thus had the greatest share of consideration, when UK consumers searched for retail-banking related keywords on Google UK. The report also assesses which brands interacted well on social media networks.

Greenlight's research reveals that combined, the number of searches conducted on Google UK for mortgages, loans, bank accounts and debit and credit cards totalled 2.5 million in July, 4.6 per cent down on January's 2.7 million.

Table 1: Retail Banking-related searches July 2011 compared to January 2011

Source: Greenlight

Most queried terms

Although the most queried term was 'Mortgage calculator', with 368,000 searches, more than half of the ten most searched for terms pertained to loans. They included 'Pay day loans', 'Loans for bad credit' and 'Student loans'. In fact, loan-related searches were up by 53,543 on January's total, accounting for 37 per cent of online retail banking-related searches in July, compared to 31 per cent for mortgages, 19 per cent for bank accounts and 13 per cent for credit and debit cards.

The three most visible brands for loan-related searches

MoneySupermarket, Tesco Bank and Sainsburys Bank were the three most visible websites in natural search* for loan-related queries. They attained a 58 per cent, 30 per cent and 27 per cent share of visibility, respectively. In paid media, MoneySupermarket was again the most prominent advertiser with 57% share of voice. Kwik Cash and Wonga followed with 27 per cent a piece.

Most influential in Social Media - brands and bloggers

Greenlight gauged the influence of the top 15 brands across social media and measured their engagement by monitoring their fans and followers across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. MoneySavingExpert was the most visible brand across the social media platforms analysed, having the largest social media presence for retail banking-related keywords.

Greenlight also identified July's most authoritative bloggers in the retail banking sphere as Christophe Langlois of Visible Banking, Bret King of Movenbank and Serena of Fabulously Broke.

Notes to editors

To arrange an interview or for further information please contact:

Krishna Rao
T: +44 20 3326 6232
E: [email protected]