Although the highest conversion rates still came from searches where the user sought brand terms throughout--rates were 9.3 percent for searches where a brand term was both the first and last search made--the rates were only slightly lower when the search started on a non-brand term and ended on a brand term--8.73 percent.

"Generally, only the last term a search enters gets credit for the conversion, and brand terms are particularly prevalent toward the end of the search process," the report stated. "The non-brand terms [enter] earlier on in the process, which bring the consumer into the realm of consideration."

According to David Berkowitz--the author of the study and director of strategic planning at 360i--marketers should look more holistically at campaigns, and not necessarily assume that the final search term is the one that gets the sales. "One thing that marketers can and should be doing is manage the brand and non-brand terms together--holistically, they're often seen as two separate entities," he said. "There's a reason to categorize them separately when running the campaign, but when running the analytics, and seeing what terms can explain the conversions--that's when you need to bring them all together."

The study also found that conversion rates increased when the user encountered the market's ads on more unique searches. "While the number of consumers entering multiple unique keywords accounted for 8.39 percent of the sample, these accounted for 19.2 percent of transactions," the study stated. "This disproportionate share can be attributed to the brand, website or offering resonating across the breadth and range of their interests."

Berkowitz said this suggested that marketers needed to pay attention to the "long tail" of search--not just focusing on a few brand keywords, but increasing the breadth of coverage of their search campaigns. "When consumers enter multiple unique keywords, and access a marketer's ad this way, they're far more likely to convert," he said. "It really points to some value in being present there for a range of search terms both brand and non-brand, and the better presence along the long tail of search is another great way to increase conversion rates."

The study monitored over 5.1 million unique clicks from 3.9 million unique users during the first quarter of 2006.

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