• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 17, 2009

Digital marketing agency 360i has developed a measurement tool that it believes can calculate the effectiveness of a brand's visibility in natural search engine rankings. The metric, dubbed PageShare, monitors the effectiveness of brand and non-brand keywords in universal search and social media query results.

PageShare, as defined by 360i, weighs the value assigned to a marketer's presence for a set of keyword terms in search engine queries. It is calculated by analyzing the number of text listings across the first three search engine results pages (SERPs). Each individual keyword, or set, is assigned a weight based on its rank in the query.

John Ragals, COO at 360i, says the idea came from a need to understand the influence that social networks, marketing and Twitter have on brands in universal search queries. The agency has monitored results for clients during the past nine months through a Web dashboard. The scorecard brand rankings include Excellent, Great, Good, OK and Poor.

"You want to have more shelf space for your brand on the first three pages of search engine query results," Ragals says. "You will likely always have shelf space, but you want to remain at the top of the shelf, and have more width across the shelf to fill it out."

Supporting the new metric, 360i published "The State of Search" report. As part of the report, 360i prepared a SEO audit for each of the Top 100 advertisers in the United States. The rankings tests ten brand terms for each of the top 100 U.S. advertisers. They were analyzed to determine the strengths and weaknesses when capitalizing on natural search "shelf space" for the brands.

The report also examines the frequency of universal search results, enhanced listings, such as videos, news, and social media listings, and links to social destinations Twitter and Facebook, for the 1,000 brand keywords measured in the study.

The findings reveal that PageShare varies widely based on industry, keyword type and other attributes. They also reveal that universal search listings appear more frequently for non-brand terms, and social media has a small -- 7% -- but influential presence within natural search.

The majority of social media listings are controlled by someone other than the marketer. This indicates a need for marketers to more carefully evaluate what's appearing in brand searches, and in some cases, participate in social media as a way to improve visibility in natural search queries.

PageShare varied across the top 100 U.S. advertisers, excluding universal search results and social listings other than YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Citigroup led the pack with the strongest PageShare -- 70% and higher. AT&T and Hewlett-Packard took the top two positions on the list. A closer look reveals that the brands have a large number of product and brand domains, which they leverage for higher PageShare.

Coty, Hyundai Motor and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) hold the weakest PageShare at 30% or less. The study suggests that the brands, especially MGM, could raise their PageShare with a SEO strategy using social listings and other digital destinations.

"These companies need to take a look at social media to see if they are doing enough or the correct things to put the correct marketing message in front of the correct audience," Ragals says.