TVs top iPods in online search

London, 29 January, 2010 - Televisions were the most popular entertainment product searched for online in November 2009, reveals research just published by Greenlight, the UK's leading independent search marketing agency. According to the report, 'Brown Goods Sector Report - Issue 4', the number of UK consumer searches for brown goods overall exceeded 20 million in November 2009, a jump of almost 5 million on October's 15.2 million and an increase of 7 million when compared to September's total.

Greenlight's research covered five segments - Entertainment products, TV's, DVD players and recorders, PC's and laptops and Camera's and camcorders. To gauge the audience size and a profile of how UK Google users went about their search for brown goods, Greenlight used industry data to classify 940 keywords of the most popular search terms and totalled the number of times each one was used. Greenlight's report is based on search volumes for the last quarter, with a focus on November to give a more in-depth analysis.

'Televisions' the most popularly searched for term followed by 'iPod' then MP3 players'

Accounting for over a third of November's searches, the entertainment products comprising MP3 players, personal video players, audio and iPod products, together with brand terms such as Logitech and Apple, were the most popular. Combined, they accounted for over a third (7.5million) of November's searches.

However, with a 13% share (2.7 million searches), the term 'Televisions' was by far the most popular individual brown goods search term. 'iPod', its nearest rival followed with 9%, then 'MP3 players' with 6%.

Amazon the most visible site in natural and paid search

Greenlight determined the top 60 best positioned, and hence most visible websites in natural search* based on rankings on page one of Google to see where each website or brand was positioned, and the respective size of the audience they were reaching as a result of their having that keyword specific visibility.

Amazon was the most visible site with a 61% share of voice in natural search. It ranked at position one on page one of Google for 106 of the 940 keywords analysed. Kelkoo followed with 33% visibility. In third place was Wikipedia, the most visible information site, attaining 30% share of voice.

Although ranking fourth and fifth respectively in Greenlight's league table, PC World and Curry's captured only a quarter of November's keyword searches in natural search. (See table 1 below. If you are unable to view it clearly, please contact the press office)

Table 1: Top 5 of the 60 most visible brown goods websites in natural search, UK

Source: Greenlight

In paid search**, Amazon (42%) was again the most visible advertiser followed by Sony (35%) then John Lewis (29%). (See table 2 below. If you are unable to view it clearly, please contact the press office). Amazon was also the only brand to achieve strongest visibility in integrated search, followed by Argos then Money Supermarket.

Table 2: Top 5 of the 60 most visible brown goods websites in paid search, UK

Source: Greenlight

Interestingly, almost a quarter of the 60 most visible websites in natural search were brown goods information or review sites. According to Greenlight, these sites achieved notable visibility due to relevant content and credibility through links. This contrasted with paid search where 9 of the top 10 advertisers were brown goods retailers of which only one was an aggregator.

Please note: If you plan to run this story online, please link any references to Greenlight via the following:

http://www.greenlightsearch.com/sectorreports/browngoods.html