Home Services Lead In Small Business Search Spend: Study

Does search spending, like charity, begin at home? Small businesses seem to think so: Home care companies such as plumbers, landscapers and roofers led a number of advertiser categories in search expenditures by small businesses, according to a new study.

Roofer clients spent an average of $2,745 during the first quarter of 2010 – the most of any advertiser category. They were followed by plumbers ($2,735) and attorneys ($2,428). Overall, small business marketers spent an average of $2,201 during the first quarter of 2010.

But according to WebVisible, which based its study on spending by its small business clients, landscapers were the most aggressive in ratcheting up their spending. At an average of $1,902 each during first-quarter 2010, they increased their expenditures by more than 50% over first-quarter 2009’s level.

What other industries saw high growth? Plumbers didn’t reach their number two spot on the total expenditures list without some effort: This category saw 17.4% growth from first-quarter 2009. Physicians took third place, with their average $2,083 spend representing a 14.8% jump from a year ago.

At least some of the money is going toward a wider range of keywords. Keyword counts rose from an average of 53 per advertiser a year ago to an average of 72.

Only two groups pulled their spending levels down: Attorneys cut their spending by 7.1% from a year ago, and insurance firms trimmed 3.4%, with each insurer client spending, on average, $2,206 with WebVisible.

Google continues to suck up most of the search dollars, although the 60.3% it pulled in during the most recent quarter is slightly off the 62% it claimed a year ago. Yahoo’s share ticked up from 23.7% a year ago to 25.6%, while the revamped Ask.com, which didn’t have a presence among WebVisible’s clients a year ago, drew 2.7% of the spend. In each case, the remainder was made up of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Yahoo demonstrated the ability to deliver relevant eyeballs, if click-through rates are any indication. Yahoo click-throughs were up 138% from first-quarter 2009, while Bing’s clicks rose 53%. Google trailed the pack with click-through rates increasing only 29% from a year ago.

Oddly, the cost of Yahoo’s keywords fell between the two quarters, by an average of 4.5%. In contrast both Google and Bing saw price increases, of 2.9% and 3.1%, respectively.

WebVisible’s first-quarter 2010 results represent nearly $23 million in U.S. small business advertiser spending spread out over more than 12,000 individual advertisers.