Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500: Q4 / 2009

Abstract:

The ongoing research project from Conductor, Inc. is the first to systematically track the Fortune 500 brands’ natural search effectiveness over time. The Q4 study analyzes 4.1 million paid keywords, examines the paid/natural visibility correlation, and investigates the effect of more specific ‘long tail’ searches for these brands.

Executive Summary:

The group has made slight progress in aligning their natural search visibility with their paid spends, increasing their percentage of companies in the top 50 natural search results from 17% in Q4 2008 to 25% in Q4 2009, but overall, the Fortune 500 continues to be largely invisible in natural search.

Key Takeaways include:

• Only 2% of the domains (not companies) surveyed showed a significant number of their terms in the top results.
• The ‘Accommodation and Food Services’ industry was the most visible of industries, yet still only averaged page five in search engine results.
• More than half of Fortune 500 companies had almost no search engine visibility, with their targeted keywords not ranking in the top 100 search results.

NEW TO THIS STUDY!

• More Keywords
  Examined a total of 6.7 million paid search keywords (up from 4.1M )
• More in depth paid analysis
  Analyzed paid search spend by industry
• Added landing page analysis
  Examined the distribution of the type of page on which the Fortune 500 keywords are found (landing page vs. top level domain)