Online Searches for Auto Insurance Quotes up 35%

Online Searches for Auto Insurance Quotes up 35%: "Online Searches for Auto Insurance Quotes up 35%

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008;
-- Janet Meiners |

comScore reports that more people are searching for auto insurance quotes online. It also looks like people are more influenced by paid search than natural search results. The queries for auto insurance quotes were up more than 35% in 2007.

There were nearly 9 million search-referred auto insurance quotes made in 2007. More than one-quarter of were made through a search engine. The overall growth for online auto insurance queries increased only 15%.

If you’re in the auto insurance industry, here is some advice: rather than advertise your company name, like “Geico” use generic terms, like “car insurance quote.”

* For paid search, branded terms didn’t lead to completed quote applications (19% did) compared to generic search terms (33% completed quote forms).
* In the organic search, generic also led (22%) over branded (11%).
* After seeing an insurance ad, people were much more likely to visit the company website or do research on the company.

Paid search keeps getting more expensive, especially for generic terms. For local insurance companies and national, running local ads usually mean less competition. You can spot a local ad by seeing the nam"