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American Idle: Is Detroit Stuck In Park? What Search Engine Data Tells Us | ymarketing

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Stuck in Park?

As a follow up to a highly successful series where the ymarketing team predicted winners on American Idol, we're now turning our attention to what could be called "Doom In Detroit".

This is the first in a series where we will look at what Search and Social Media data can tell us about the relative chance each Auto Manufacturer, and its brand lines, stand of surviving the current economy.

Background

The most popular post in the Idol Prediction Project series was when we looked at purchase intent. In that blog post we examined how search engine referrals leading to iTunes had a high correlation with each contestant's popularity. Week after week our data showed us the favorites, and identified those that were likely to be leaving early. Five weeks before the Final 3 Idol contestants were announced, our data correctly predicted it would be Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Danny Gokey. We utilized Search and Social Media popularity as a proxy for the popular vote that the TV show conducted each week, with great success.

Applying Learning to Detroit

When it comes to understanding the current automotive industry landscape and predicting its future shape--and with it each Auto Makers chance at survival--we believe the same logic holds. Although; this American Idle Prediction Project on Automotive OEMs will certainly present its challenges.  For example: An inquiry into the volume of searches for "General Motors" these days yields a wealth of information, but nearly all of it is related to GM's government bailout, it's impending dealership closures, negotiations with the UAW and the like. Interesting, but not very helpful for predicting popularity and sales. But could an examination of all queries on Google for the search term "GM Dealership Chicago" yield the kind of results we're interested in; purchase intent?

Week One: Car Buyers Take Action After Researching Online

We took a look at one prominent car buying research site that served 6.3 million unique visitors last month, Edmunds.com, which ranks in the top 200 of all sites in the U.S. After visiting Edmunds.com, prospective buyers and tire-kickers alike venture off to well over 5,200 different sites (as measured by our data sources). These post-site visits are called "referral traffic" in search engine speak.

A significant portion of these post-site visits from Edmunds.com end up at the Auto Makers' own sites (fordvehicles.com and chevrolet.com), and many more end up at individual dealership sites (siouxcityford.com and hamiltonchevrolet.com as examples).

We wanted to see WHICH American Auto Makers are benefitting the most from this Referral Traffic and, arguably as important if not more important, which ones are growing month to month. Here's what we found over the last two months:

Week 1 Results

Ford is clearly in the lead with buyers who do their research on Edmunds.com. They have 55 different sites in the top 5,000 and all but a half dozen are dealerships. Their most prominent site, fordvehicles.com, ranked #19 overall and grew more than 4% last month alone. Fordvehicles.com also has a 10% edge over their largest competitor, GM's top site. Since Ford is a top tier and consistent advertiser on American Idol, it does beg the question: Is Idol responsible for helping Ford get out of Idle?

GM's top site, Chevrolet.com, ranks #22 and is in 2^nd place. The site's traffic from Edmunds.com referrals actually grew at a faster rate than Ford's at 19.2%; so we look for a showdown in the coming months for the top Auto OEM slot. GM has 40 sites in the top 5,000, and 30 of them appear to be dealerships. It could be argued that GM overall gets more traffic from Edmunds.com. If you add up all the available data for the top 600 sites GM actually has an 8% edge in total referral traffic. But none of those top 600 sites are a dealership, so it bears further research and analysis before we can draw a conclusion.

Chrysler is hurting. If you read the news, you know that. This blog will certainly pay attention to the news cycle and see how it impacts purchase intent. But for now, we can quantify that Chrysler's top site, dodge.com, ranked #25 and is in 3^rd place. The problem: the site saw its Edmunds.com referral traffic drop more than 9% last month. Chrysler has 36 sites in the top 5,000.

Encouraging signs: Chrysler appears to have the top two dealership sites (dodgedealer.com ranking #630 and windwarddodgechryslerjeep.com coming in at #649) and their #2 web property, chrysler.com, ranked #39 and grew at a rate of more than 50% last month.

What do you think?

What do you think of the premise of this blog series? Can purchase intent be measured by proxy using search and social media data? In coming blogs we will examine other data sources and yes, take a look at the global automotive industry as well. If you'd like to have input into the next installment, please share your ideas and opinions here.