MarketScan Mortgage Industry Scorecard Finds Brand Name Banks Losing Real Estate Online

Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank One, HSBC and Citibank, losing online value to smaller, local mortgage brokers and shopping sites.

Novato, CA (PRWEB) September 22, 2005 -- SEMphonic, search engine marketing (SEM) analytics technology provider, today released results from the MarketScan Mortgage Industry Scored Report which shows that sites such as eLoan.com, LendingTree.com, Shopping.com, Nextag.com, and Calibex are buying mortgage-keywords online in the search engine real estate marketplace and competing strongly against mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers at major banking institutions including Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank One, HSBC, and Citibank, among others. Smaller, local mortgage brokers are relying on paid placement to gain rankings on Search Engines. Also poorly represented in this competitive space are well-known Real Estate companies: only GMAC and Century 21 appear in the top 100 rankings overall.

Researching close to 1,000 keywords on both Yahoo and Google, SEMphonics competitive analysis tool MarketScan shows the kinds of loan brokers and mortgage lenders which one would expect in the overall SEM rankings:

Site / Overall Ranking / Organic Ranking / Paid Ranking

eloan.com   1   2   2
lendingtree.com   2   4   3
bankrate.com   3   1   12
lowermybills.com   4   14   1
quickenloans.com   5   3   7
nextag.com    6   36   4
mortgage101.com   7   5   99
comparefreequotes.com   8   4392    5
homestore.com   9   9   21
interest.com   10   8   41
100bestlenders.com   11   4393    6
ditech.com   12   19   15
countrywide.com   13   22   14
bankofamerica.com   14   35   9
my.countrywide.com   15   6   790
goapply.com   16   41   11
hsh.com   17   7   791
compareinterestrates.com   18   182   8
getsmart.com   19   24   20
calibex.com   20   3010    10

The most prominent players in this market enjoy a very comfortable lead over their smaller competition. Looking at the top 5 organic and paid listings, on both Yahoo and Google, for the top 50 most relevant keywords, we can see below that the top companies appear disproportionately more frequently. The following are the ten most prominent companies in the pay per click (PPC) space for these 50 words and for how many keywords they appear:

Company   # of keywords appearing

lowermybills.com   35
lendingtree.com   34
eloan.com   26
comparefreequotes.com   17
nextag.com   16
ditech.com   15
goapply.com   14
countrywide.com   11
bankrate.com   10
homeloantrust.com   9

Together, these top 10 companies make up 38% of all listings for these 50 words on Yahoo and Google. The situation is even more dramatic when one looks at organic listings:

Company   # keywords appearing

eloan.com    60
bankrate.com   43
lendingtree.com   35
quickenloans.com   28
my.countrywide.com   26
mortgage101.com   22
interest.com   14
hsh.com   12
imortgagecentral.com   11
lowermybills.com   10

These top 10 companies account for 53% of organic listings. Clearly, the big players in this space leave the rest far behind in terms of exposure. But there are quite a few smaller players in this marketplace, making it particularly competitive in terms of rankings.

Ratings are based on MarketScan evaluation. MarketScan ranked 5,051 different websites appearing across 1000 mortgage keywords, and there are almost 300 sites in the top 5 positions for the top 50 keywords. The tool then collected online competitive intelligence in an easy, fast and accurate manner to evaluate the organic and paid performance of each site across the entire spectrum of relevant words. Rankings are weighted based on word relevancy and organic and paid position on Google and Yahoo.

To purchase a full copy of the study or to request a customized version, please contact John Williams.

About SEMphonic

SEMphonic brings over 8 years of experience in Internet marketing strategies and competitive analytics to search engine marketing (SEM) professionals. The company focus is to develop and deliver powerful tools that provide SEM practitioners worldwide with a rigorous process that delivers more effective SEM program results. The tools collect online competitive intelligence and use it to improve the ease, speed, accuracy, and efficiency of SEM program execution when compared to traditional, complex methods, and technologies. The result is more rapid, comprehensive, and accurate SEM analytics for online marketing programs.

SEMphonic is the maker of MarketScan, the most powerful and comprehensive SEM competitive analytic tool. It provides a foundational analytic basis for search engine marketing while increasing workflow efficiency and reducing implementation costs. SEMphonic provides these technologies, tools, and services to maximize the competitive edge for companies such as American Express, AOL, CyberTrader, Charles Schwab, Endless Pools, Hotwire, Intuit, Marshall Strategies, Mediasmith and others. SEMphonic is headquartered in Novato, California. Visit us at www.semphonic.com for more information.

Media Contact:
David Libby
Tel. 510.271.0640 ext. 150

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