Q1 2010 | Visibility Report: The Anti-Virus Industry

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The Anti-Virus Industry

Insight into the search marketing strategies of the top 10 anti-virus software companies
By Nathan Safran Senior Research Analyst
w w w . c o n d u c t o r . c o m

Visibility Report

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Key Takeaways

Executive Summary
With spend on consumer security software forecasted to reach an all time high this year and consumers performing tens of millions of anti-virus searches per month, we analyzed the top ten anti-virus software companies natural search visibility and search traffic acquisition strategies over a one year period. The group was largely invisible with only 5% of competitive industry keywords (keywords at least the companies were bidding on) and 6% of their most expensive paid keywords, appearing in the top 5 search results.

1. 10 of the most active

anti-virus keywords account for nearly 13 million monthly searches.

2. Only 5% of competitive
anti-virus industry keywords (keywords at least the companies were bidding on) appeared in the top 5 natural search results.

3. Only 6% of the
anti-virus companies 1000 most expensive paid keywords appeared in the top 5 search results.
Figure 1

4. 87% of the top 10

anti-virus companies search traffic came from natural clicks.

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The Anti-Virus Industry

Tens of Billions Spent Annually in Security Software, Millions of Monthly Online Searches According to Gartner Research, the worldwide spend on security software in 2010 will grow by 13% to $16.3 billion. Consumer security software will be the largest segment, accounting for more than a quarter of all security software revenue. The web is a natural medium for consumers and corporations to use to research anti-virus software, with ten of the most active anti-virus keywords accounting for nearly 13 million monthly searches. With such a large market at stake and with so much search activity occurring online, we targeted the top ten anti-virus software companies to gauge their individual search marketing strategies and success in natural search visibility. AVG Is the Traffic Leader with the Capture of the Term free anti-virus Search Traffic We began by analyzing the software companies search traffic breakdown and daily spend on paid search. We studied their search traffic for the one-year period from September 2008September 2009. The industry appeared to be a five man race (at least as it applies to natural search traffic) with the bottom five investing virtually nothing and receiving no more than 600,000 visits over the twelve month period. The ten vendors received 73% or more of their overall search traffic from natural search (Figure 2) and the top four each spent $3500 or more per day on paid search (see Figure 1).

Figure 2

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AVG was the traffic leader due in large part to their capturing a larger percentage of the millions of free anti-virus searches than their competitors, in spite of their competitions pursuit of the same traffic. Trend Micro, however, while ranking third in paid results for free anti-virus, was only eighth to AVGs number one in natural results for the same term. Poor Natural Search Visibility for the Most Expensive & Competitive Paid Keywords Next we analyzed keyword visibility, by extracting the individual companys 1000 most expensive paid keywords from Internet research firm Spyfu (for the seven vendors bidding on a minimum of one thousand keywords). We also created a list of 731 most competitive paid keywords that nearly half the companys were bidding on. We tracked the natural search position of both sets of keywords to gauge the vendors natural search visibility of their most expensive and competitive terms, operating on the principle that the companies were voting with their wallets in spending on these keywords and they would want them visible in natural search Overall, we found visibility to be poor, with the companies on average appearing in the top five search results for their 1000 most expensive keywords only 6% of the time and only 5% of the time for their competitive keywords (see Figure 3 and Figure 4). By comparison, the travel industry, another highly competitive online industry weve analyzed, appeared in the top 5 search results for their competitive keywords 24% of the time.

Conductor, Inc.

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Figure 3

Figure 4

Kaspersky stood out as an SEO outlier. Despite being a distant fifth in overall search traffic, investing virtually nothing in paid search, they were the second most visible for their 1000 most expensive keywords and third most visible for their competitive keywords. Although McAfee had the largest percentage of most competitive and expensive keywords in the top 5, both Symantec and Kaspersky had a significantly higher percentage of borderline keywords, keywords in the 6-50 range, a percentage of which could be on the verge of moving into top visibility positions. Conductor, Inc.

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Methodologies
Companies: The software vendors we studied were the top most popular anti-virus packages on CNET.com and the Top Ten Reviews website, http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/. Websites: We analyzed a single primary domain for each company. To determine the companys domain, we searched for the companys brand name in Google and used the first company owned domain returned. The table below shows the websites analyzed: Company Norton Trend Micro Panda F-Secure McAfee AVG Kaspersky Vipre Avira Bit Defender Domain symantec.com trendmicro.com pandasecurity.com f-secure.com mcafee.com avg.com kaspersky.com sunbeltsoftware.com avira.com bitdefender.com

Natural vs. Paid Visits: The company sites total visits and natural search versus paid search breakdown were obtained from Internet research firm Comscore. Daily Paid Spend/Competitive Paid Keywords: The software companies common keywords, 1000 most expensive keywords, and daily spend was obtained from Internet research firm Spyfu. Daily spend is an average of the monthly spend from September 2008-September 2009 divided by 30. Monthly spend is the midpoint between the bottom and top spend range provided by Spyfu. Conductor, Inc.

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About Conductor, Inc.

Conductor is the leading provider of SEO measurement and optimization technology, empowering enterprise marketers to manage and improve their SEO efforts. Conductor Searchlight is a subscription-based, software as a service (SaaS) platform which enables customers to gather competitive data, prioritize and improve their decision making, and accurately measure the ROI of their SEO efforts. Conductor also offers a range of associated professional services to its over 250 Fortune 500 and Internet Retailer 500 clients, a majority of the leading interactive agencies, and some of the world's most prestigious publications. Based in Manhattan, the company was founded in 2005, and is one of the fastest growing companies in New York. For more information, please visit: www.conductor.com

Conductor, Inc.