Given all the media excitement that Apple can generate with the mere mention of a new 'i' product such as the new iPad, you might think that the iPod would kick television ass in terms of SEO. But hold your horses, according to UK search marketing agency Greenlight, it's the other way around. In the newly published 'Brown Goods Sector Report' (and oh boy does that sound like an exciting read - irony detected, irony detected) Greenlight reveals that televisions were the most searched for entertainment product online at the end of last year.
It reckons that in November 2009 the number of UK consumer searches for brown goods overall exceeded 20 million, that equates to a jump of almost 5 million on the previous monthly figures and an increase of 7 million compared to the September total. In order to gauge 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. The report was based on search volumes for the last quarter, with a focus on November to give a more in-depth analysis.
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 (7.5 million) 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%.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how those figures change for quarter one 2010, given the iPad effect on search. Towards the end of January it seemed like everyone online was talking about hardly anything else other than the iPad.
Greenlight also 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.
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.