WebPosition Finds Amazon Tops the Search Engines among Major Retailers for this Year's Hottest Holiday Toys

WebPosition Finds Amazon Tops the Search Engines among Major Retailers for this Year's Hottest Holiday Toys Study Finds Amazon, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart Rely on Sponsored Search More than Organic Search December 2004 (Newstream) -- WebTrends, the web analytics market share leader and a business unit of NetIQ Corporation (NASDAQ: NTIQ), on December the 14th unveiled results from its first WebPosition® Search Ranking study of how four major retailers that sell five of this year's hottest holiday toys are using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to attract online visitors. Top-level findings, revealed at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, indicate that Amazon's visibility in both organic results and sponsored search results were the highest, with an organic Visibility Percentage more than twice that of the other retailers. Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Amazon were analyzed using WebPosition® Gold to determine the visibility these web sites have in organic and paid search results on Google, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Teoma and Yahoo! Web Results for five toys included in USA Today's 'Hot Dozen' toys: "Cabbage Patch Kids", "Bratz Tokyo-A-Go-Go Dance N' Skate Club", "E-L-M-O", "Balloon Lagoon" and "Ms. Pac-Man TV Games" (Source: Toy Wishes magazine, October 2004). Results indicate that as a group the retailers are more than twice as visible in sponsored search results (73.87%) as they are in organic search results (35.87%). Amazon was found to be the most visible among all sites in organic search engine listings for the targeted keywords with an organic Visibility Percentage of 34.67%, followed by Wal-Mart at 14%, Target at 7.33% and Sears at 3.87%. Visibility Percentage is a reflection of a site's positions within the first three pages of search results for its targeted keywords and search engines. For example, a site that has #1 organic search positions for all of its targeted keywords in all search engines examined would have an organic Visibility Percentage of 100%. When WebPosition analysis included sponsored search listings, visibility increased across all retailers with Amazon rising to 52%, followed by Wal-Mart at 39.73%, Sears at 16% and Target at 13.6%. The data suggests that retailers are using sponsored search listings to achieve high positions for these products, often in the absence of high organic search positions. "It's well known that unless your site appears within the first three pages of search results for a given term, only a small percentage of web searchers will find you," said Fredrick Marckini, CEO and founder, www.iprospect.com firm, iProspect. "While organic listings are certainly the goal for many companies, sponsored search listings guarantee visibility with a position equivalent to what they are willing to pay. This is why it's critical for marketers to understand the ROI driven by specific paid and organic search terms, and to work to increase their organic positions over time." According to The iProspect Search Engine User Attitudes Survey, web searchers find non-paid listings to be more relevant than paid listings on commercial searches, with 60.5 % deeming organic results as more relevant versus 39.5% favoring paid listings across all search engines (March 2004). "While this study is a snapshot of SEO and SEM performance for a handful of products, the finding of major retailers relying on paid search to augment their organic search listings holds true with what other studies have found," said Jason Palmer, vice president of product management and product marketing, WebTrends. "Since competition for paid keywords will only increase, it's critical for sites to utilize rankings and recommendations such as those provided by WebPosition to increase their organic visibility." WebPosition has published the Top 5 Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing in a recent edition of its MarketPosition newsletter at www.marketposition.com/mp-1004.htm. Methodology This is merely a sampling of how these leading retailers are using SEO and SEM techniques for a small group of products. The analysis focused solely on five toys using only the official product names as keywords. WebPosition Gold produced search rankings for the five hot toys for each of the retailers examined using the manual query setting in its Reporter module. Visibility Percentage reflects a site's overall visibility for all the keywords and all search engines examined, providing a higher-level understanding of search effectiveness than search rankings alone can provide. A data snapshot was taken on December 9, 2004, to compile these findings. About WebPosition Gold WebPosition Gold 3 optimizes a web site's relevancy, visibility and overall performance with search engines, by enabling businesses to understand how their sites perform for various keywords and what they can do to achieve higher search positions on each of the major search engines. With WebPosition Gold 3, WebTrends offers organizations solutions for managing the entire Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process: organizations can conduct keyword research through the integrated Wordtracker service, increase visibility and improve search engine positions with WebPosition Gold, and understand conversions and revenue from paid and organic search terms with WebTrends® On Demand and software solutions. About WebTrends As the worldwide leader and trusted standard for web analytics, WebTrends delivers award-winning solutions that help marketing executives improve their return on investment. From campaign performance and search engine marketing to web site conversion and customer retention, WebTrends provides marketers a complete solution to accelerate their web results. Thousands of organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune and Global 500 companies, rely on WebTrends everyday to measure and optimize their results. Offering both an On Demand service and software solutions, WebTrends uniquely provides customers with complete choice and control to ensure the solution can adapt with their dynamic business needs. WebTrends is a business unit of NetIQ Corporation. For more information, visit www.webtrends.com. About NetIQ NetIQ Corp. (Nasdaq: NTIQ) is a leading provider of Systems & Security Management and Web Analytics solutions. Historically focused on managing Windows-based applications, NetIQ now delivers cross-platform solutions that enhance business performance resulting in higher returns on infrastructure and web investments. NetIQ products are sold across all continents directly and through a network of authorized NetIQ partners and resellers. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with development and operational personnel in Houston, Texas; Portland, Ore; Raleigh, N.C.; Bellevue, Wash. and Galway, Ireland. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.netiq.com or call (888) 323-6768. NetIQ, WebPosition and WebTrends are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetIQ Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Search Engine News High Tech