Conductor Research VR Anti Virus 2010

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The An-Virus IndustryThe An-Virus Industry

Q1 2010 | Visibility Report: The An-Virus Industry

Visibility Report

w w w . c o n d u c t o r . c o m

Insight into the search markeng strategies

of the top 10 an-virus soware companies

By Nathan Safran

Senior Research Analyst

research



Visibility Report: The Anti-Virus Industry | 2

© Conductor, Inc.

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 andsearch traffic acquisition strategies over a one year period. The

group was largely invisible with only 5% of competitive industry

keywords (keywords at least ½ the companies were bidding on)

and 6% of their most expensive paid keywords, appearing in

the top 5 search results.

Figure 1

Key Takeaways

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 ½ 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.

4. 87% of the top 10

anti-virus companies’

search traffic came from

natural clicks.




© Conductor, Inc.

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 w ith 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 2008-

September 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 than600,000 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




© Conductor, Inc.

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 competition’s pursuit of

the same traffic. Trend Micro, however, while ranking third in

paid results for “free anti-virus,” was only eighth to AVG’s

number one in natural results for the same term.

Poor Natural Search Visibility for the Most Expensive &

Competitive P aid Keyw ords

Next we analyzed keyword

visibility, by extracting the

individual company’s 1000 most

expensive paid keywords from

Internet research firm Spyfu (for

the seven vendors bidding on a

minimum of one thousandkeywords). We also created a list of

731 most competitive paid

keywords that nearly half the

company’s 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 onaverage 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 we’ve analyzed, appeared in the top

5 search results for their competitive keywords 24% of the

time.




© Conductor, Inc.

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.

Figure 3

Figure 4




© Conductor, Inc.

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 company’s domain, we searched for the

company’s brand name in Google and used the first company

owned domain returned.

The table below shows the websites analyzed:

Company Domain

Norton symantec.com

Trend Micro trendmicro.com

Panda pandasecurity.com

F-Secure f-secure.com

McAfee mcafee.com

AVG avg.com

Kaspersky kaspersky.com

Vipre sunbeltsoftware.com

Avira avira.com

Bit Defender 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.

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/






© Conductor, Inc.

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, andaccurately 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

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Conductor Research VR Anti Virus 2010