Net Media Planet has revealed the brands with the highest share of paid-search visibility for garden improvement keywords as spring begins its descent on Britain.

The digital agency has compiled a top ten list of PPC investors in the UK between January and mid-March 2015, drawing samples from garden maintenance and furniture keywords.

Unsurprisingly, internet giant Amazon held the top position throughout the period, with a 22.4%, 18% and 20.4% share of visibility for prime keywords in January, February and March.

In February and mid-March, Amazon tied first place with primrose.co.uk, as both outlets increased their share of search visibility by 2.4% as the nation began to embrace warmer weather.

Over a thousand keywords analysed by Net Media Planet included “garden furniture”, “garden tools”, “garden sheds”, “decking” and “garden lighting”. The graph below shows the interest in individual keyword categories between January and mid-March.

Springing into action

In other areas of the research, high-street favourite John Lewis lost some of its paid-search visibility from January to March, decreasing from 8.2% in January to 8% in February and dropping to 6.1% in March.

Without knowing John Lewis’s strategy it is difficult to determine the reason for the decrease in its share of search. Other priorities might be consuming a greater chunk of its marketing budget, or the group may be relying on a natural surge in online activity due to its in-store efforts.

Elsewhere, despite not making an appearance in the top ten for January, Diy.com increased its share to rank 4th in the PPC rankings for February, holding 10% of overall visibility.

Companies including gardenfurniture4u.co.uk and lazysusanfurniture.co.uk were also new to the top ten in February, but the former dropped out of the frame in March, replaced by a new competitor in dobbies.com.

John Lewis aside, it was apparent that a number of brands have increased their paid search efforts in the weeks leading up to spring.

January 2015

February 2015

March 2015

 

“We know that seasonality plays an important role in some sectors, and gardening is the perfect example,” said Alex Moody, partnerships manager at Net Media Planet.

“As we get towards the warmer months, we are seeing more and more consumers search for products related to being outside. Also, we know that this is the key season for gardeners to begin planting, which explains the large increase in the number of searches for ‘Garden Tools’.

“This is the prime time for advertisers within the gardening sector to be taking advantage of these keywords. From the results it is clear to us that consumers are going online to search for these items.”