Apple search engine marketing stats revealed

The latest statistics from data intelligence agency Hitwise reveal that Apple has a strong stake in search engine marketing as its much anticipated Tablet PC has soared up the search rankings.

Despite the fact that Apple has yet to officially announce their tablet PC, rumours and speculation have been so rife that in the space of a week it has become the fourth most searched for laptop model in the UK. The Hitwise ‘Hot Consumer Electronics List’ shows that searches for terms such as ‘apple tablet’ ‘apple islate’, ‘itablet’ and ‘ipad’ accounted for 1.9% of all laptop related searches last week – a significant increase on 1.1% for the week before.

However an accompanying Hitwise report on the ‘most searched for apple products in the UK’ reveals that for vendors of Apple products, search engine optimisation and marketing is a solid idea. Searches for Apple products seem to be incredibly popular, as despite all of the hype and online rumour-mills dedicated to the so-called ‘iTablet’, it was still far from the most searched for Apple product for the last week.

In fact the tablet was only the eleventh most searched for Apple product in the UK. It accounted for just 0.8% of Apple related searches despite doubling its share in the space of a week. This was 35 times less than the iPhone, which was still only the second most popular Apple-related search term. ‘Apple iTunes’ was the most searched for Apple product, suggesting that people looking for the software and mp3 store predominantly use search engines to locate the proper URL rather than bookmarking it or following links.

The variations in search terms for different models or accessories for the iPod dominated the list (rankings 3,4,6,7,8,10) suggesting that vendors of Apple’s entertainment products have a key opportunity in search engine optimisation and marketing.