Online searches for credit and debit cards, loans and mortgages all decreased in search volume during March and April, according to research from search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) consulting firm, Greenlight.
According to the report, ‘Retail Banking April 2010’, searches for mortgage-related terms fell the most – by 63%, since January, decreasing from 3.2 million to 1.2 million in April.
Greenlight used industry data to classify 700 of the most popular search terms used by UK consumers when they used Google to look for providers of bank accounts, credit and debit cards, mortgages and loans. Greenlight also analysed ‘natural search’ rankings on Google to assess which banks, building societies and aggregator sites were positioned on page one for each term to produce a ranking of the top 60 most commonly appearing and prominent websites. For paid search, Greenlight monitored the advertisers appearing in the sponsored links for the top 120 of the 700 terms analysed.
There were 4.3 million searches performed in April for retail banking-related keywords. This was a decrease since Greenlight’s last report in January 2010, when 5.6 million searches were made.
Bank account-related terms (which included current accounts, savings accounts and ISAs), were the most searched for, with over 1.3 million searches (31% of the total search volume) made in April. The terms ‘Cash ISAs’, ‘ISA savings’ and ‘Online banking’ accounted for 15%, 12% and 6% share of bank account-related searches, respectively.
Loans, mortgages and debit cards and credit cards accounted for 29%, 28% and 13% share of retail banking-related product searches.
Whilst the number of searches for ‘buy-to-let mortgages’ in April 2010 were up on 2009 levels, they dropped dramatically (87%) between January 2010 and April 2010, from 301,000 to 40,500 in April.
Searches for the term ‘second mortgages’ fell 99% from 246,000 in January 2010 to 1,900 in April 2010 whilst those for ‘fixed mortgages’ were down 98% over the same period.
Searches for ‘mortgage calculator’ also decreased considerably over the course of Q1 2010 from 637,000 in January to 301,000 in April.
MoneySupermarket was the most visible website for retail banking-related products, in natural search. It achieved 73% visibility through ranking at position one on Google 280 of 700 keywords analysed. By contrast, MoneySavingExpert achieved 36% share of voice through ranking at position one for just 74 of the keywords analysed. Since January, its visibility increased 20% which saw it replace Halifax at position two in Greenlight’s league table.
Despite a marked decrease in search volume for mortgage-related keywords in April, 10 of the top ad creatives were mortgage-related, whilst four advertised loans and one promoted savings accounts.
