The AMEC Virtual Global Summit on Measurement with the theme Communication Accountability: Planning, Purpose and Proof was power packed with speakers from across the globe and attended by more than 200 professionals from different continents. The impressive line-up shared best practices on research, analysis and measurements in the day-long sessions.
I’m sharing notes from the presentation by Stella Bayles, Director, PR tools firm CoverageBook & AnswerThePublic and James Crawford, Managing Director, PR Agency One on ‘Share of Search’.
It was interesting to hear from them about this new innovative search tool which can be used with other tools available for measurement and analysis.
Sharing some excerpts from the presentation:
What is Share of Search?
‘Share of Search’ can easily be mispresented with SEO, Digital PR or Link building. However as the presenters claim it’s a metric that measures ‘Share of brand awareness’. It’s the number of times your brand is typed into a search engine divided by the number of times all brands in your category are typed into a search engine. In short, how many searches does your brand have vs the competition?
How to calculate Share of Search?
Share of search can be calculated using a keyword research tool, you can pull the number of searches for each brand into a spreadsheet, and add up the total for each at the bottom. You can further create a table underneath without any of the search data and divide the number of brand specific searches by the total and every brand will have its percentage
Why is it useful?
Share of Search is a good predictor of share of market. Share of Search also provides useful intelligence into brand awareness and seasonality within a market or category, and is a quick way to compare brands and top of funnel activity.
Drawbacks
There is no sentiment analysis and the Share of Search of a particular brand can go up in crisis. Its difficult to use for smaller brands and generic names. Its hard to apply to brands with multiple footprints, e.g Microsoft and some sector brand can get muddled with footfall search.
How does it fit into the AMEC Framework?
Share of Search has to be used as part of a wider measurement framework such as the Integrated Measurement Framework. Share of Search is the outcome that should be taken into consideration alongside media analysis, social media analysis, website analytics and other qualitative and quantitative data.
Some important trivia on Google search
- There are over 3.5 billion Google searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide
- 15 percent of searches we see every day are new
It’s impossible to capture the extensive research here but you can read more about it online which will give you more insight and knowledge of the usability of the tool.
AMEC which is in its 25th anniversary year, is the world’s largest media intelligence and insights professional body, representing organisations and practioners who provide media evaluation and communication research. The International Association for Measurement and Evolution of Communication popularly known as AMEC has grown from 7 members to about 200 now representing organisations based in 86+ countries worldwide and more than 1000 professionals dedicated to measurement and evaluation best practice across the globe. AMEC’s pioneering work in the field has included the development of the Barcelona Principles; Barcelona Principles 2.0 and most recently 3.0 the launch of the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework and the Measurement Maturity Mapper.
*figures and data are taken from the presentation shared by the speaker. For more information refer to the research paper
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Sarika has previously had stints with with Weber Shandwick as Vice President - Client Experience, Adfactors PR, Text100 (now Archetype) and Perfect Relations. With keen observation and analytical skills, Sarika has successfully led PR campaigns for key brands across multiple sectors by leveraging her strength and expertise in the communications arena.
She is a post graduate in communications from Xavier Institute of Communications. She is based in Mumbai and in her free time loves to spend time with her daughters, play with her dogs, read and travel.
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