A study monitoring over 5.1 million unique clicks from 3.9 million uniqu users during the first quarter of 2006 revealed an interesting fact.

Although the highest conversion rates still came from searches where the user sought brand terms throughout — rates were 9.3 pecent for searches where a brand term was both the first and last search made — the rates were only slightly lower when the search started on a non-brand term and ended on a brand term — 8.73 percent.

Marketers tend to over-credit brand search terms because of the data reported by their analytics. Usually the conversion tracking credits only the last term a search enters. Brand terms occur near the end of the search process, while non-brand terms enter earlier on in the process.

David Berkowitz, the author of the study and director of strategic planning at 360i says that marketers should pay attention not only to just a few brand keywords, but to the long tail of search.

Source: MediaPost Publications.