Covario Announces Results from Seven-Month Study of 300 Large Brand Web Sites
Company Develops First Science-Based Approach to Predicting Changes in Organic Rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN
Date: 3/26/2008
San Diego , CA Covario Inc., (formerly SEMDirector, Inc.), the leader in interactive marketing analytics, today announced results of a seven-month study based on data from 300 major brands, analyzed March 1, 2007 through October 15, 2007. The study, conducted via Covario™ Organic Search Insight performance measurement and analytics software, has established statistically significant patterns linking certain SEO practices to predictable improvements in organic search rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. As a result, this research has led to the development of the industry’s first systematic, science-based approach that affords large advertisers control over the SEO results. While Covario is not making any ascertations about how the search engines operate, the results of the analysis performed by Organic Search Insight show empirically how investments by large advertisers in their sites led to striking differences in the reactions to SEO techniques among the three top US engines.
Many advertisers aim to provide an optimal user experience by building intricate rich media Web sites; however, these techniques can set up a situation where the sites are not easily located by the engines and ultimately their customers. There are three main components of a Web site on which organic advertising rankings are based: technical factors (e.g., tags, URLs), content on the site, and context in which the site is viewed by the engines (largely determined by links to the site). Covario’s study estimates that Google, Yahoo and MSN react very differently to SEO techniques utilized in these three areas:
- Google is 15 times as sensitive to technical issues as Yahoo, and twice as sensitive as compared to MSN
- Google is 50 percent more sensitive to link strategy than MSN
- Google is approximately 25 percent less sensitive to content issues than the other engines.
Also, the study showed that when it comes to managing natural search programs, there are some key rules to follow. For listing content on the sites, it is all about location. Having key terms in specific strategic locations on a Web site or page made a large difference in rank performance. For links, it is about quality, not quantity. The study showed that there is no correlation between raw number of links to a site or page, but there is a highly significant correlation between the quality of links and rank.
“We essentially used a statistical analysis on proprietary client data we gathered in 2007 to comprehensively look at the impact of various organic search factors on changes in rank,” said Craig Macdonald, vice president of marketing and product management at Covario. “Based on our analysis of this data, we feel comfortable saying that Covario Organic Search Insight has detected key patterns that will have a large impact on the organic search process for large advertisers.”
The study discussed above was performed via Covario’s Organic Search Insight solution on 300 large brand Web sites belonging to 25 large advertisers, most of which are Fortune 500 companies. The automated software crawled each of the major brand sites two times per month, performing 46 checks on each page on the site. With its new findings, Organic Search Insight now takes into account the diverse sensitivities of the search engines, and can therefore predict the optimal mix of SEO improvements that will most benefit the advertisers’ Web site across the major engines.
Earlier this month, Covario announced an enhancement to the Organic Search Insight solution that is a direct result of this study – priority weighting of remediations. Specifically, recommended site changes will now appear in order of the predicted impact to the advertiser’s organic rankings, taking into account the statistically significant patterns detected.
Covario’s Organic Search Insight recently won 1to1 Magazine’s Impact Awards for New Media and DMReview’s Innovative Solution Awards for its work with Procter & Gamble. The solution is part of the Covario Marketing Action Platform™, which provides marketing executives, managers and agencies with a consolidated view of search marketing activities across the distributed enterprise. To learn more, please visit http://www.covario.com/products_OI.shtml.
 |
|
 |
Digg This! |
About Covario, Inc.
Covario, Inc., formerly known as SEMDirector, is the leader in interactive marketing analytics (IMA) software. The Covario portfolio provides global organizations with robust interactive and search marketing analytics solutions for display advertising, paid search advertising and organic search engine optimization across the enterprise and throughout the channel. Covario enables complex and distributed organizations to control brand integrity, ensure budget transparency and deliver quantifiable results across business units, distribution channels and languages.
Headquartered in San Diego, Covario’s growing customer list includes some of the world’s best known brands in high tech manufacturing, financial services, electronics, media & publishing and consumer packaged goods, such as Intel, Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and AIG/AIU among others.
For more information on Covario call 858. 397.1500