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Over half of Irish companies don't make the top five search results for keywords in their categories, leaving them on the outside when it comes to driving organic traffic to their websites. In an Internet era where search is so important to people looking for information, failing to optimize a site for search engines tends to look like an experiment in leaving money on a park bench every day instead of putting it in a bank. That seems to be happening in Ireland, where Silicon Republic noted the awful truth about businesses and search optimization, in that it is virtually non-existent for the majority of firms that could benefit from it:

A new survey by Captivate Digital has found that 53 percent of leading Irish companies don’t appear in the top five results in search engines based on a simple keyword search in their category. According to some estimates, 75 percent of internet users rely on search engines like Google to navigate around the web and close to 60 percent of all websites receive more than half of their traffic through search engines. Consequently, a poor showing in search results can seriously hinder a company’s chances of raising its profile.

Couple that with the common practice of using a search box as an address bar when typing a company’s name into a web browser, and the impact becomes obvious. Competitors get the traffic that should belong to the company a person probably wanted to find but couldn't. As in the United States, Google dominates the search landscape in Ireland. It drives people to websites, and Captivate Digital's director John Dunne said in the report spending for online advertising by Irish firms should grow by 54 percent in 2007. Maybe those companies aren't leaving so much money on park benches this year. --- Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: