The Google TradeMark Policy Change Could Affect 76% Of Searches

There's so much debate lately about the impact of the relaxation of bidding against trademarked terms. However, most of this debate lacked solid data!

Thanks to Hitwise, there is bucket load of data available. One highlight is that the rate at which users type in brand names, company names, site names etc has increased from 58.2% in 2005 to 76.0% in 2007.

I'd be interested in seeing if these 'navigational searches' include 'brand + generic' terms, but it makes interesting reading when you consider that a maximum of 76% of searches could be impacted by this change in stance from Google.

Obviously it won't be that high, but we can still assume that a large number of searches will be affected.

Hitwise only looked at the top 2000 searches and we know how long the search tail is - but, in terms of volume, we can still say its significant.

Time to get my brand keyword list together .... there's gold in them darn hills!