Consumer searches for insurance at their highest

Greenlight's "Insurance Sector Report - Issue 17" profiles consumer search behaviour and the most popular keywords used when they went to Google UK in July to look for health, pet, home, travel and motor insurance. The report reveals total search volumes by sector and the most visible sites to searchers.

According to the research, search volumes for insurance peaked in July, totalling 3.2 million, up by 1.3 million on February's level, when they were at their lowest for the year.

Totalling 1.7 million, the motor insurance sub-sector accounted for the majority (53%) of queries.

The travel insurance segment followed, making up a 28% share of all insurance-related searches with the three most queried terms being 'travel insurance', 'holiday insurance' and 'cheap travel insurance'.

10% (338,620) of consumer internet searches for insurance in July pertained to home insurance and the rise of the "accidental landlord", compliments of the new generation of buy-to-let property owners, looks to have impacted trends in this category.

Whilst household/home insurance terms dominated, cumulatively accounting for 40% of queries, those pertaining to landlord insurance accounted for 12%, a far greater share when compared to buildings insurance-related queries. Combined, they made up just 4% of home insurance-related searches.

Greenlight's research found moneysupermarket.com was the most visible website for insurance overall, achieving an 84% and 70% share of voice in the organic* and paid** listings, respectively. However, it did not dominate in all sub-sectors.

In the natural listings for example, bupa.co.uk and petplan.co.uk topped Greenlight's league tables charting the most visible sites for the health and pet insurance categories, respectively. In the paid listings, moneysupermarket.com was the most visible site for home insurance only.

Comparthemarket.com meanwhile was the most visible in social media.

Notes:

*Natural /organic Search - Listings in search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms
**Paid Media - an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.

Greenlight's "Insurance Sector Report - Issue 17" profiles consumer search behaviour in this sector. It assesses which brands, websites and advertisers are the most visible in natural, paid media results, and social media and hence have the greatest share of consideration when consumers go to Google UK to search health, pet, home, travel and motor insurance.