44% of traffic to consumer packaged-goods sites comes from search, according to new joint research from comScore, Procter & Gamble, Yahoo and SEMPO. And these buyers spent 20 percent more in the month following their search activity, reveals the study.

Who knew? Even those looking for CPG go online first..Nearly 163 million unique consumers visited baby, food, personal care and household product sites during the three-month span of the study--with 71 million of those visits originating via search. Baby and food products drew the most search traffic, with 60% and 47% of the visitors arriving via search respectively. 

These stats show both the brand-building and purchase intent benefits that CPG brands can derive from adding search marketing to their mix.

Search-driven CPG site visitors' motivations are important to understnad, says the study.

• 30% were looking specifically for the company Web site
• 73% were researching products
• 64% were seeking help with an actual purchase decision
• Almost 50% were looking for product promotions

Understanding these CPG search motivations is the key to linking brand benefits to search behaviors says the rpeort.

And if you are a CPG retailer bear in mind the impact of natural or organic search results.  "If you think you're covered by Pay Per Click ads in the search engines, think again" says Marketing Sherpa. 

According to eyetracking studies you get far more views and clicks from organic search.

Of course the trick is to raise your search engine visibility and get your website onto page one in Google for all the brand and generic key words and phrases CPG searchers use to access products like yours.

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