MEDIA MYTHS & REALITIES

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In each of the three countries surveyed, search rules. In the U.K., consumers reported using search engines more than any other form of media. A whopping 85 percent of Brazilians use them—on par with the country’s healthy newspaper readership. And in the U.S., search engines are the most heavily used form of digital media and fall closely behind major network and local TV news and local newspapers (and ahead of cable news).

For any company or brand paying attention to its reputation, there is no question that having a search strategy is important. Ketchum’s new media strategist Gur Tsabar discusses why.

	Search Is Maturing . . . Now It Matters More Than Ever By Gur Tsabar, Vice President and New Media Strategist, Ketchum View Bio

Search engines may not literally be “new” anymore, but among new media and old, they matter more than ever.

In the U.S., search engine use has remained steady over the last year, with 59 percent of consumers using them regularly compared to 60 percent in 2007. This suggests that search is maturing. At the same time, the survey results show that trust in search engines is rising; on a 10-point scale, consumers ranked it 7.0 this year, up from 6.5 a year ago.

Consumers rely on search engines to deliver all of the relevant information on any given subject—whether it first appeared on a blog or in a newspaper. That elevates sites such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN to something more than simple search engines. Consumers view them as virtual catalogs of all the information they might ever need.

Each and every search query represents a customer, a prospective customer, a journalist or a blogger telegraphing to the world what it is that they want or need—effectively starting a conversation. A company or brand can earn its way into those conversations by providing the precise information that fills those wants and needs.

Search engines can enable brands to engage stakeholders in an arena that is beyond the reach of traditional earned media by intercepting organic search results to tell the most accurate story possible. In fact, PR practitioners should think of them as mass media—key outlets for announcing a new product, countering negative news, or simply enhancing corporate or brand reputation.

Yet, despite widespread use of search engines among consumers, the latest Media Myths & Realities data show that communications professionals rank search engine optimization fairly low as a priority. The result is a range of missed opportunities to steer conversations about their brands.