Fortune 500 automotive companies are not optimizing their Web sites efficiently enough and lack visibility on the major search engines, according to a study conducted by digital marketing agency iCrossing. The study, “Search 500 Index: Automotive,” looked at 116 automotive- related keywords that online searchers often use.

“People are searching for automotive information online, but in general they are not finding some of America’s largest corporations in natural search results,” the study said.

Optimization is not only key for driving sales, but is also critical 
to building awareness, positioning and protection of a company’s brand both online and offline, the study said.
ICrossing, Scottsdale, AZ, analyzed position data for Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and AOL.

Companies are ranked based on iCrossing’s index, which considers the value of natural search engine market share on a scale of 0 to 10. Scores take into account the weights of the top five major search engines, estimated monthly search volume for the keyword analyzed and a company’s keyword rankings within the first three pages of natural search results. A higher score means higher visibility. Eleven of the 36 Fortune 500 automotive companies analyzed ranked higher than a 2 for natural search brand visibility. General Motors received a 3.6, the highest score.

Six of the Fortune 500 automotive companies appeared in the lists of the 100 sites most visible for the automotive keywords analyzed. Business-to-consumer companies, especially online auto dealers and consumer-facing brands, performed better than business-to-business automotive suppliers on iCrossing’s visibility index. The report suggests tactics to improve natural search engine visibility including re-evaluating a company’s online competition to include not only direct competitors and companies that impact visibility.

The report also suggests that companies add more consumer- based content to their sites, such as user reviews and opinions. “Consider partnering with or buying media on relevant, informational sites – which tend to rank higher in natural search – in order to garner as much residual traffic as possible,” the study said. “Increase competitive search-based analyses to derive new insights as to how your brand is performing online.”

Associate Editor Giselle Abramovich covers search engine marketing, list news, and print and production.
Reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

---

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.