There are over 30 million drivers in the UK and by law every single one must have a valid insurance policy for their car. As a result, the car insurance search market is one of the most competitive, so we decided to take a look at the search presence of car insurance providers. Our referring domain for this example was Churchill.com, a brand which is mainly known for it’s nodding ‘Churchill dog’ on the TV.

First of all I want to take a look at Google Trends; it’s interesting to see that the number of searches for ‘car insurance’ has fallen slightly since 2004/05, yet has remained relatively steady since 2008. However, the number of cars on the road increases each year and, with the exception of 1991, has done since the end of the Second World War. Could this mean a rise in the number of uninsured drivers? Well apparently not, as according to the Motor Insurance Bureau, the level of uninsured drivers has fallen by around 50% over the past ten years.

So where is the search traffic going? Judging by the Google Trends graph below, those searching for ‘car insurance’ are instead more likely to search for one of the comparison sites, with searches for ‘compare car insurance’, ‘compare the market’ and ‘go compare’ all having an upward trend since 2007.

Return to the MarketScout analysis and Churchill.com performs relatively poorly for such a well-known brand. The top 4 positions for overall visibility are unsurprisingly over taken by comparison sites, which reflects their rise on Google Trends.

Insurance giants Aviva and More Than take positions 6 and 8, with the surprising figure of Tesco Bank sandwiched between them. Our selection of Churchill.com fail to feature among the frontrunners, with rankings for just three of the top 100 keywords around car insurance and an average position of 7.

Looking at the off-site equity Churchill.com have an impressive Trust Flow of 51, which sees them on par with Directline.com and marginally behind the quartet of Elephant.co.uk, Tescobank.com, Admiral.com and Endsleigh.co.uk.

With further optimisation and citations from credible sources Churchill.com could begin to climb their way up the rankings, however, it’s difficult to see any insurance company challenging the comparison sites for top spot in the rankings.

The MarketScout Report Explained

Top level visibility

The graph below indicates top level visibility and identifies competitors. The data shows that Churchill.com has poor visibility in the car insurance market with 3 rankings in the top 10 results for relevant keywords.

Key metrics

This second Metrics graph details Churchill.com’s performance as based against key metrics, including Trust Flow and Referring Domains. The average market performance for each metric is represented by the dashed red line.

Visibility vs. competitors

This graph outlines Churchill.com’s visibility against that of its competitors in the ‘car insurance’ market. It details rankings in the top 10, average position score and number of indexed pages and it highlights key differences.

Trust flow

The below compares the Trust flow, number of referring domains, .edu and .gov domains of Churchill.com and its competitors, which provides insight into the value and overall quality of backlink profiles.

Topical equity

The topical equity table offers an overview of Churchill.com‘s site performance in terms of topics covered and highlights opportunities for specific areas.

Social media

The graph below shows social media activity for the site under analysis vs its competitors. This is based on the number of times a piece of content from the website has been shared socially and not on the number of likes of followers they have.

Conclusions

The conclusions below are based on performance in each specific area of analysis, Churchill.com is rated red, orange or green according to its main areas of strength and weakness.

Key phrases

The below shows the details all of the key phrases used for any keyword-related analysis in the report. The green tick next to a keyword symbolises that Churchill.com is ranking in the top ten results for that particular keyword.

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