Connected-Home Brand Search Grew 240% In 2016
by Laurie Sullivan, Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 6, 2017, 1:24 PM
One of the hottest topics at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) drove the most search traffic for manufacturers during this past year.
Branded terms for manufacturers of wearable devices — mostly smartwatches — generated the highest amount of search Web traffic, but when analyzing the change in traffic, connected-home Web sites improved the most with 242% more visits generated from branded keywords in November 2016.
SimilarWeb analyzed searches for connected homes, wearables, virtual reality and augmented reality, and drones and robots. The company compared a year’s worth of data from November 2015 to 2016, analyzing the desktop search traffic related to these categories or brands/product for both generic and branded keywords.
Smart Home gadget companies like Nest, Ecobee, Belkin and Google Home saw their Web site traffic increase drastically, but one of the biggest winners was Amazon with its smart speaker Echo.
SimilarWeb reported that three times more users reached the top connected home manufacturers’ Web sites during November 2016 compared with the year-ago month, after searching for specific brands and products — 1.69 million versus 550,000.
The number of branded terms used also jumped significantly to 941 in November 2016, up from 483 November 2015.
When searching for generic terms like thermostat or cam, 71% more visits were made to the top connected home manufacturers’ Web sites compared to November 2015.
Some 138% more traffic was redirected to the Amazon Web site from “Echo” brand search terms — 340,000 in November 2015, compared with 810,000 in 2016.
In addition to connected homes, wearables became a keyword that was tossed around. Branded keywords terms related to wearables drove 31% more desktop search traffic to manufacturers Web sites, compared with the year-ago month. VR/AR rose 50% and drones rose 67%, respectively.
Facebook Oculus, Samsung, Sony, HTC and Microsoft drove searches in the VR/AR market. SimilarWeb tracked a 43% increase in category search traffic from generic keywords like “VR.”
The number of generic keyword variations have also risen by 119% from 901 to 1,972. The number of branded search terms in the category increased by 50% — from 840,000 visits in November 2015 to 1.26 million in November 2016 — indicating increased familiarity with the leading products and companies in the space.
MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily
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