Competitive intelligence research company, Hitwise, has revealed that nearly 8 in 10 searches for leading travel, retail, and insurance brands send visits to that company’s website, with 1 in 10 sending visits to a site offering the same or similar produc

Published: 25 Apr 2005

Competitive intelligence research company, Hitwise, has revealed that nearly 8 in 10 searches for leading travel, retail, and insurance brands send visits to that company’s website, with 1 in 10 sending visits to a site offering the same or similar produc

The new research from Hitwise apparently comes at a critical time for the search industry, as recent lawsuits have attempted to hold search engines responsible for policing trademarks, whilst Thomson, Thomas Cook, and First Choice have banned third parties from bidding on their brand names.

Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories each day, and provides marketers with insight into on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.

“Marketers can easily find out if anyone else is bidding on their trademarks but finding out if they are losing potential customers is much harder,” comments Heather Hopkins, Senior Research Analyst at Hitwise. “This research allows firms to quantify the extent to which they are losing potential customers to competitors and affiliates, providing critical context to this growing area of anxiety for marketers.”

Key findings of the research are:

- brand proves to be particularly important online;

- leading brands rarely receive visits based on searches for competitor brands;

- it is more difficult than it at first appears to capitalize on someone else’s brand; and

- firms need to take heed of common misspellings of their brands.