Online searches for mortgages down 14%
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The number of online searches for mortgages fell 14% in July, compared to January 2011, according to search and social marketing agency Greenlight.
There were 818, 088 online searches for mortgages in July, down from 951, 923 in January 20111.
Mortgage searches accounted for 35% of all retail banking-related searches in January, compared to 31% in July.
The report profiles search behaviour in the retail banking sector. It analyses which brands, retailers and review sites were the most visible in both natural and paid media results and thus had the greatest share of consideration, when UK consumers searched for retail-banking related keywords on Google UK.
Combined, the number of searches conducted on Google UK for mortgages, loans, bank accounts and debit and credit cards totalled 2.5 million in July, 4.6% down on January’s 2.7 million.
Although the most queried term was ‘Mortgage calculator’, with 368,000 searches, more than half of the ten most searched for terms pertained to loans.
They included ‘Pay day loans’,‘Loans for bad credit’ and ‘Student loans’. In fact, loan-related searches were up by 53,543 on January’s total, accounting for 37% of online retail banking-related searches in July, compared to 31% for mortgages, 19% for bank accounts and 13% for credit and debit cards.
MoneySupermarket, TescoBank and SainsburysBank were the three most visible websites in natural search for loan-related queries. They attained a 58%, 30% and 27% share of visibility, respectively.
In paid media, MoneySupermarket was again the most prominent advertiser with 57% share of voice. KwikCash and Wonga followed with 27% a piece.
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Readers' comments (1)
Simon Baker | 12 Oct 2011 1:43 pm
Of course mortgage search volume is down 14 % from January to July. It's called seasonal variation and has happened every year since I've been monitoring it for the last 10 years. January is a peak time for mortgage enquiries which is why the lead price then is often lower. What happens in July? Maybe it's a peak time for going on holiday.
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