Case Study: Manufacturers That Link To Authorized Dealers Have More Influence On Search Results
This case study compares the search engine rankings for the top ten search terms of two premium manufacturers. One manufacturer, Company A, is a multinational cable and audio company that does a very good job of linking to its Internet authorized dealers. The other manufacturer, Company B, is a multinational audio company that does not link to its Internet authorized dealers. This study shows how a manufacturer can minimize negative PR online and gain more control over its search engine results by properly linking to its Internet authorized dealers.
This study looks at the first ten natural (i.e. organic, free) links on Google for the top ten search terms for each manufacturer, not the Google AdWords, Products or Universal results. This study found that Company A had over 8 times more influence through its authorized dealer links than Company B.
Why Is It Important to Have a High Placement in the Search Results?
Websites that are ranked higher in search results receive a higher number of clicks. Studies have shown that the first result receives 42% of the clicks, the second result receives 12% and the third receives 9%. As a total, the first ten results receive 90% of the clicks for any given search result. Very few people go beyond the first page of results, unless the first page of results is not relevant.
The Internet has quickly become the most trusted source of information for consumers, beating out magazines, TV and newspapers. 77% of consumer electronics purchases are first researched online. 60-90% of online searches result in offline purchases. This means that manufacturers who effectively influence search results not only drive online sales, they increase offline sales as well.
For manufacturers to effectively maintain their brand image, they need to ensure that the first page of search results returns the websites of the manufacturer and its authorized dealers. When the first page of results is dominated by the manufacturer and its authorized dealers, fewer people will click through to sites that may have a negative impact towards the manufacturer’s brand.
How Does External Linking Affect Search Results?
There are hundreds of factors used by search engines when ranking search results. Several of the main factors considered by search engines are based upon internal site factors such as the website’s use of keyword-rich content and proper page structure. One of the most important external factors in being ranked higher in the search engines on the relevant keywords is the quality and quantity of links that come from other high ranking websites. Websites are seen as more relevant when they receive several links from high quality websites. Therefore, the more relevant a website, the higher its search engine rank. Manufacturers are seen by the search engines as an authoritative source for their brand because they receive several high quality links from various reputable websites. This is why manufacturers are almost always the first result for their trademarked terms. This is also why sites like Amazon.com and WikiPedia.com are often in the first page of results. They are highly popular sites with a large number of incoming links that feature high quality, custom content.
Although external links will help any site, they do not guarantee that it will be ranked on the first page of results. However, sites that are proficient in Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) can utilize external links along with good content and structure to move to the top of search engine rankings. It is also important that external links are properly created. Links embedded into flash or JavaScript cannot be read by most search engines and give very little, if any, benefit to the site receiving the link. Links to external sites should be created using standard HTML. For more information on properly creating links see our document titled, “Recommendations for Linking to Authorized Dealers.”
How Linking to Authorized Dealers Helps Manufacturers
When manufacturers link to their authorized dealers, they are not only telling customers where their products can be purchased, they are also influencing the search engine results. How is this possible? Typically, a search engine will recognize a manufacturer’s website as the most important website on that particular topic. When manufacturers link to their authorized dealers’ sites, they are telling the search engine that the dealers’ websites are also an authoritative source for this topic. The search engines then see the authorized dealers’ pages as being more relevant than unauthorized websites and/or review/information sites that solely use keywords to improve their rankings. A balanced combination of good, unique website content and external links will eventually have authorized dealers’ websites ranking higher in the search results.
This point is made obvious when comparing the data gathered for this study. When comparing the quality of search results for the top ten keywords for Company A against the quality of results for the top ten keywords for Company B, the difference in numbers is remarkable. The number of authorized dealers’ sites ranking in the top ten results for Company A is an average of 4.2 out of 10 on Google’s first page, compared to 0.5 out of 10 for Company B on Google’s first page of results. 54% of Company A keywords bring up either a direct Company A page or an authorized dealer, whereas only 28% of Company B keywords bring up either a direct Company B page or an authorized dealer. With the combination of links to Company A’s website and its Internet authorized dealers’ pages, Company A’s top ten searches have legitimate links covering more than half of the first page of Google.
Why Do Informational/Review and Third Party Sites Cause Problems for Manufacturers?
While some review sites, blogs and message boards can be beneficial and give manufacturers and their dealers praise, others do just the opposite. For example, one of the titles of the top ten sites listed for the term of Company B’s brand name is “Why Company B Sucks.” The article is full of negative comments toward Company B and its products, written by non-credible sources. Out of the top ten keywords we researched, Company B’s terms average 3.3 links to informational/review sites. Several of these informational sites were negative towards Company B’s brand and products. The Internet makes it very easy for an individual to anonymously and falsely discredit a manufacturer and its products. Review and information sites are often favored by search engines due to the large amount of content and incoming links these sites receive. The key is to have the search engines favor Internet authorized dealers over these review and information sites. Company A seems to have a much smaller percentage of negative comments simply because Company A has positively influenced the credibility of its authorized dealers’ websites, which show up earlier in the search results than any negative comments about Company A products.
Third party sites like eBay and shopping comparison sites can be negative for manufacturers that do not have strong, online distribution policies. These third party shopping sites often list authorized dealers, but even legitimate comparison sites like PriceGrabber.com and Shopzilla.com are flooded with unauthorized dealers undercutting prices well below the minimum advertised price. This both decreases the value of the manufacturer’s product and hurts authorized dealers by not allowing them to be competitive with unauthorized dealers. However, this negative effect is minimized for manufacturers with strong distribution policies and online brand equity strategies.
Prices are not the only way comparison sites hurt manufacturers. Every major price comparison site also has a review section where anyone can write anything anonymously about a manufacturer’s products. These sites, uncontrolled by manufacturers, often contain negative reviews towards products and their manufacturers.
When looking at the search results for any of the top ten Company B searches, the combination of informational/review and third party sites account for almost 69% of Google’s first page of results. Therefore, the majority of the results for Company B take the consumer to sites that are not controlled either directly (e.g. Company B’s website) or indirectly (e.g. authorized dealers websites) by Company B.
Conclusion
It is important for manufacturers to link to Internet authorized dealers to minimize the effects of negative PR and free riding by unauthorized dealers, which both erode brand equity and margin. Manufacturers that properly link to Internet authorized dealers can positively influence search engines to rank authorized dealers higher in the search results. By helping Internet authorized dealers rank higher in the search results, negative sites will be pushed lower in the search results and receive far fewer clicks. The data clearly shows that manufacturers who properly link to Internet authorized dealers have a stronger influence on search engine results. Having a stronger influence will drive more potential customers to authorized sites, resulting in a higher sell through of the manufacturer’s products online as well as offline.
Data
The top ten search terms were obtained by using Overture’s keyword selector tool. Each of these terms was then searched on Google.com. Each top ten organic link was classified into one of the following categories:
- Manufacturer (e.g. Company A & B’s websites) Company A: 12%; Company B: 23% – These are good links and are colored blue in the pie charts.
- Authorized Dealer (e.g. 4ElectronicWarehouse.com, Crutchfield.com, CircuitCity.com) Company A: 42%; Company B: 5% – These are good links that should comprise the majority of links in the search results. Authorized dealer links are colored green in the pie charts.
- Informational/Review (e.g. wikipedia.com, reviews.cnet.com, epinions.com) Company A: 13%; Company B: 33% – These can be negative toward the manufacturer and are colored red in the pie charts.
- Third Party Shopping (e.g. eBay.com, pricegrabber.com, shopping.yahoo.com) Company A: 25%; Company B: 36% – These can be positive and negative and are colored pink in the pie charts.
- Other Retailers – Company A: 8% – These are retailers mostly buying through distribution. These retailers can be limited by a combination of distribution strategies and proper links to authorized dealers.
- Not Related – Company B: 3% – These are links that are not related to the manufacturer and are colored in a light purple in the pie charts.
The above data was gathered on September 26, 2007. Due to constant updates and multiple Google servers, today’s results may vary from the results obtained in this study.
