Online Search Volumes for Travel Insurance Rise as Home Insurance Falls

3.1 million searches performed in April by UK consumers for insurance-related products.

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Recent effects of the volcanic ash cloud on global travel saw consumers look for travel insurance, particularly ‘premium’ policies which offer more comprehensive cover. By contrast, searches for home insurance products dropped from 1.3 mn to 476,000.

London (PRWeb UK) July 6, 2010

Search volumes for travel-related insurance since January have increased from 896,000 to 932,000, reveals the ‘Insurance Sector Report April 2010‘, the latest research from Greenlight, the UK’s leading independent specialist search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) consulting firm. Indeed MoneySupermarket* stated it saw a 27% increase in traffic to its website between 15-20 April. Due to the recent effects of the volcanic ash cloud on global travel, consumers were looking for travel insurance, particularly ‘premium’ policies which offer more comprehensive cover. By contrast, searches for home insurance products dropped from 1.3 million to 476,000.

Greenlight used industry data to classify 720 of the most popular search terms used by UK consumers when they used Google to look for providers of home, travel and car insurance. Greenlight also analysed natural search rankings on Google to assess which insurance providers and aggregator sites were positioned on page one for each term and produced 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 90 of the 720 terms analysed.

Some key findings reveal:

There were 3.1 million searches performed in April for insurance-related products, a month-on-month decrease since Greenlight’s January 2010 report, when search volume totaled 4.3 million;

Car insurance-related terms accounted for 56% of searches followed by travel insurance (29%) and home insurance (15%);

‘Home insurance’ and ‘Contents insurance’ were the most popular search terms used when UK consumers went online to look for home insurance-related products. For travel, it was the terms ‘Travel insurance’ (39%), ‘Holiday insurance’ (8%) and ‘Cheap travel insurance’ (5%). For car insurance, ‘Car insurance’, ‘Cheap car insurance’ and ‘Car insurance quotes’ were the top three terms accounting for a share of 38%, 11% and 8%, respectively;

MoneySupermarket was the most visible website in natural search and paid search. In natural search, it attained 84% share of voice through ranking at position one for 62 of the keywords analysed. It was followed by Confused.com and GoCompare, which achieved 64% and 40% visibility, respectively;

In paid search, TescoFinance increased its visibility by 17% since January. It ascended Greenlight’s paid search league table from position 12 to six in April. AXAInsurance attained 18% visibility and ranked at position 12, having previously featured outside Greenlight’s top 60 advertisers in January;

Of the top 10 advertisers in paid search, three were aggregators and seven were direct providers. This differs slightly to Greenlight’s natural search results where there was an equal split. According to Greenlight, this indicates that aggregators are spending more in the paid search space to effectively ‘buy’ visibility.

Please note: If you plan to run this story online, please link any references to Greenlight via the following:
http://www.greenlightsearch.com/sectorreports/

Notes to Editors:

*Source: MoneySupermarket (22/04/2010)

Greenlight is an independent specialist SEO and PPC consulting and technology firm, the largest of its kind in Europe and the fastest growing. With over 100 blue-chip clients including Vodafone UK, Thomas Cook, Interflora, Co-operative Financial Services and ghd, and a multitude of awards to its name, Greenlight is a leader in the search marketing space, and is recognised worldwide for its commitment to delivering record ROI for its clients and investing in the future of search.

In addition, Greenlight is considered the premier thought leader in the sector, publishing widely read industry reports, original research, speaking at most trade events, and delivering a highly respected search training programme in conjunction with the IDM. Greenlight was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in London, with offices in New York. http://www.greenlightsearch.com

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