Retail, travel and price comparison sites take top spots in UK paid search according to new study

London, 28th February 2013 - Amazon.co.uk is the site mostly likely to be seen in paid search ads on Google UK, as well as being the most visible online retail site in organic search results, according to new research.

The findings come from a study by search and social analytics software leader, Searchmetrics which has produced a list of the top 20 most visible paid search advertisers (see table underneath) on Google UK. The list is dominated by retail, price comparison and travel brands including johnlewis.com, supaprice.co.uk and laterooms.com, with amazon.co.uk taking the top position.

Top 20 most visible paid search advertisers on Google UK

"As you'd expect, the list of the top 20 sites in paid search mostly includes sites that can benefit directly from online sales," said Marcus Tober, CTO of Searchmetrics. "The Paid Visibility score that we used to create the list reflects the advertising activity of a domain on Google UK. Changes in Paid Visibility could result from budget increases or decreases and you could probably assume that the higher the Paid Visibility score, the more budget a domain is spending on Google AdWords campaigns. Many online companies plan paid search campaigns hand in hand with their organic search marketing efforts - often turning to paid search to keep their traffic stable in the wake of fluctuations in the organic search results."

The Searchmetrics' weekly Paid Visibility score is a measure of how frequently and prominently a domain appears in paid search results based on weekly data from the search results for millions of keywords which Searchmetrics uses to populate the database that powers its online software for search and social marketers[1].

Google itself (google.com) is included in the list of 20 top paid search advertisers as it uses paid search results to attract customers for its own products, such as the AdSense programme and promoting its web browser, Google Chrome.

The Searchmetrics list of the top 20 sites that are most visible in organic search (see table underneath) is topped by free online encyclopedia site, wikepedia.org. Interestingly, amazon.co.uk is positioned at number six, which makes it the most visible retail site in organic searches, as well as being top for paid search.

"From the results of our study you would expect that many potential online shoppers who are not sure where to buy a product will end up buying at Amazon, because it is highly visible in both the organic and paid part of Google, driving lots of customers to its website," said Matthias Bachor, Marketing Director at Searchmetrics.

Top 20 most visible sites in organic search on Google UK

UK news sites, including bbc.co.uk, guardian.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk and telegraph.co.uk all make it into the top 20 organic search list, together with social media giants, facebook.com and twitter.com and Google properties, youtube.com and blogspot.com. The list was developed using Searchmetrics' SEO visibility score for Google UK, a measure of how visible and prominent a site is within organic search results[1].

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Charts
For high resolution charts of the top 20 tables in the press release, please contact Uday Radia at CloudNine PR - uradia@cloudninepr.com / +44(0)7940 584161

[1] How Paid and Organic search visibility is measured
The study analyses the most visible websites across Google UK's paid and organic search results, where visibility is defined by Searchmetrics' 'Paid Visibility' and 'SEO Visibility' scores.

Searchmetrics tracks the paid and organic ranking of millions of keywords every week and calculates the visibility scores based on:

• The number of times a domain appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs) across the keyword set
• Its prominence within those SERPs (a higher ranking equates to a higher visibility score)
• The competitiveness of the keyword (higher search volumes equate to a higher visibility score)

To create the top 20 lists in this study, Searchmetrics has used average Paid and SEO Visibility scores for the relevant domains based on the weekly scores over the course of 2012.

While SEO Visibility can relate to a website's real traffic, it is important to remember that traffic can come from many different places online. Therefore SEO Visibility is only an indicator of visibility that comes from a website's organic search channel.

About Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics GmbH is the pioneer and world's leading provider of search and social analysis software for companies and online agencies. Searchmetrics has a unique server infrastructure and software solution - its Searchmetrics Suite™ - which its clients and partners continually use to aggregate and analyze very large volumes of data on the rankings of websites, keywords in searches and competitor groups. Searchmetrics Suite™ gives users unique insight into the visibility of websites on search engines in 123 different countries and on the largest social media portals. This information plays a decisive role, especially in inbound marketing, where having excellent visibility on search engines is essential for companies to reach potential customers on the Internet.

In addition to the Suite, with its Essentials product Searchmetrics offers a tool set for a quick start in search engine and social network optimization and real-time analysis in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as high-end SEO consulting services. The company has branches in Berlin, London, Paris and New York and operates its SaaS solution through a network of partners and its online shop. The fast-growing company, based in Berlin and currently employing more than 100 staff, is part-owned by the renowned venture capitalist companies Neuhaus Partners and Iris Capital. Many renowned clients, such as T-Online, eBay, Siemens, TUI, GM and Kaspersky rely on Searchmetrics to ensure that they have excellent search engine rankings.

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