Yahoo!: One In Five Land On Car Sites Via Search

Web users increasingly rely on search engines to get to car-related sites, according to a new study by Yahoo! Search Marketing and analytics company Compete, Inc.

In June, about one in five visitors--20.6 percent--who landed on the Web sites of car manufacturers, such as Ford, or third parties such as autotraders.com, came directly from search engines. In July of 2004, just 17.5 percent of visitors to those sites came from search engines.

The study was based on clickstream data of the 2 million consumers in Compete's panel, and a survey of 846 Web users who purchased cars in the prior 12 months. Twenty-six automotive sites and six search engines--Yahoo!, Google, MSN, Ask, HotBot, and Lycos--were included in the study.

The results suggest that online consumers are stepping up their use of search for car-related reasons at a particularly fast pace, said Don Aydon, automotive category director for Yahoo! Search Marketing. "As search in general is increasing on the Web, automotive search is growing significantly," said Aydon.

Search marketers also are paying more for keywords related to cars. Research released by Fathom Online Wednesday reveals that last month, the average price for search terms in the automotive category was $1.68--up from $1.54 last September.

The Yahoo! study found that of the 25 million-plus monthly visitors to car sites, the majority--20.5 million--went to third-party sites such as Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds, while 8.9 million went to the site of a manufacturer (some visitors went to both).

Which keywords did searchers use? For the largest proportion of car-related searches--36 percent--users queried on brand names of third parties, such as Kelley Blue Book. Car makers--such as Toyota or Chevrolet--accounted for 26 percent of auto searches, while general terms--such as "SUV" or "sedan"--were used in 21 percent of car-related searches. The remaining 17 percent of car searches were for "brand name plates," such as Toyota Camry or Honda Accord LX.

Clickstream data from users who started off looking for specific types of cars revealed that almost half of those searches--46 percent--ended up on a site of a third party, such as Edmunds. That finding suggests that third parties are purchasing car brand names and models as keywords, Aydon said.

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