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| Big mortgage companies are not spending big money to acquire loan prospects looking for lenders on search engines, according to one search engine marketing firm.
A report released yesterday from SEMphonic indicated that search engine results for mortgage industry keywords are dominated by the likes of E-LOAN.com, LendingTree.com and Bankrate.com. SEMphonic, which says it specializes in providing tools to improve search engine rankings, indicated it researched nearly 1,000 keywords on Yahoo and Google for the MarketScan Mortgage Industry Scored Report. The ranking was based on a combination of organic listings, which are natural search results, and paid placement. The highest ranking major lender to appear on the list was GMAC Mortgage-subsidiary ditech.com at No. 12, followed by Countrywide.com and BankofAmerica.com, respectively in slots 13 and 14. “The most prominent players in this market enjoy a very comfortable lead over their smaller competition,” the announcement said. “We can see…that the top companies appear disproportionately more frequently.” Looking only at organic listings, E-LOAN.com, which was listed in the results of 60 keywords, ranked highest on the report. Next was Bankrate.com with 43 appearances, followed by LendingTree.com with 35 showings. Paid search engine placement, where billions of online ad dollars have been pouring in recently, was topped by LowerMyBills.com with 35 listings, SEMphonic said. Next was LendingTree.com with 34 placements, and third was E-LOAN.com with 26. But paid search reflected no major mortgage lenders — those that originate more than $2 billion monthly — in the top five slots. The lack of representation indicates many of the industry’s big players have yet to become comfortable moving their massive advertising budgets online. |
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