How much does online search optimization impact offline retail traffic flow, sell-through and brand preference?
There has been considerable debate about the effectiveness of search advertising, both paid and organic, in branding. It is a tricky issue from a testing perspective since, with organic search in particular, it is hard to have a true “champion-challenger” test where you see how consumers select brands in situations where they do or do not see ads since organic search cannot be turned off. Most studies show that search’s impact on branding is negligible. Most consumers come to search engines looking for a category and are far more impacted by offline brand building efforts in their searching and clicking on a brand than making their brand choice through the search listings. The more prevalent factor is ranking. Consumers click on the first choice more often regardless of brand, essentially allowing Google to make their brand choice for them Where we do see a lack of attention by advertisers is on comparison shopping engines. Consumers who have not made a brand choice take comparison eng
