Executive Summary

This study seeks to dissect the search traffic of the top ten big-box retailers. Specifically, how does their traffic break down into paid vs. natural visits, and how are they managing paid vs. natural keywords?

The breakdown of natural vs. paid search traffic varied widely amongst the group as did their paid spend. Despite managing far more paid keywords than natural, only one of the ten received less than 50% of their visits from natural.

Key Takeaways

• The top ten big-box retailers as a group spends approximately $678,000 per day on 1,217,966 keywords.
• The big-box retailers managed 188% more paid keywords than natural.
• 66% of the big-box retailers activity occurred from natural clicks.
• Only one of the top ten big-box retailers had less than 50% of click activity that was natural.