The service allows companies to identify high-performing search terms on a site and category level, analyze searchers and specific terms by demographic segment, and determine prime keyword and search term competitors--among other features.

"comScore Marketer is a new service that gives marketers a powerful and comprehensive set of tools to assess their online marketing performance," said Dan Lackner, senior vice president of comScore. "The granular information on both searchers and search terms available through this service empowers users with actionable search marketing intelligence."

According to comScore, one of the key benefits of the tool is its ability to perform competitive analysis of a category based on organic and paid search CTRs.

For example, in an analysis of the terms "credit card" or "credit cards" for June 2007, the service found that sponsored links accounted for just under a quarter of the click-throughs for either search term, while searchers clicked the most (76%) on natural results.

In terms of which Web properties drove the most clicks for those terms, creditcards.com took the first spot, with a 10.6 share, followed by JP Morgan Chase properties with 8.1, and HSBC with 6.1.

But the breakdowns of the three sites' paid versus organic links yields further insight, as the report shows that the bulk of creditcards.com traffic (67%) came from sponsored links--compared to only 23% and 38%, of Chase and HSBC clicks, respectively.

"CreditCards.com is clearly being more aggressive than its competition on the paid search front," said Lackner. "Ultimately, that strategy might pay off, as long as the site is receiving an incrementally higher return on its paid search dollars. In order to optimize the return on their online marketing investment, companies must understand how they're performing relative to their competition."

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