2.3 million searches were conducted online for insurance-related products in January this year - an 18% increase on the previous quarter, according to the latest quarterly research by leading search marketing specialist and technology firm, Greenlight.

Greenlight’s report,  ‘Insurance Sector Report – January 2011’,  which charts UK online search trends in the Insurance sector, reveals searches for car and travel insurance-related products were not only the most popular, they also saw notable search volume increases - 84% and 2% respectively, on October 2010 levels. However, searches for home insurance, saw a 34% dip.

‘Car Insurance’ most queried term

‘Car insurance’ was the most queried term and was searched 673,000 times in January, representing 28% of all insurance-related searches. In October 2010, the term was searched for 246,000 times, accounting for just 14% of all insurance-related queries.

Whilst searches for home insurance decreased, queries for the term ‘home insurance’ increased by 24,500 searches to 74,000, compared with October’s results, when the term only totalled 49,500 searches.

MoneySupermarket most visible site

Greenlight ranked the 60 most visible insurance websites in natural search*. It based this on their feature and rank on page one of google.co.uk for the terms most frequently used by consumers to find car, travel and home insurance over the quarter.

MoneySupermarket was the most visible website, achieving 81% share of voice.  In addition, Comparethemarket.com climbed up to second place in Greenlight’s league table, whilst gocompare.com dropped out of Greenlight’s top ten, taking eleventh place. In 2010, the site ranked in fifth place in January, third in March and second in July and October.

Saga most visible direct insurance provider in paid search

The most visible advertisers were MoneySupermarket and GoCompare. Both achieved 60% share of voice in paid search.

The AA meanwhile achieved 12% visibility, entering Greenlight’s top 60 paid search league table at position 18, having not featured in October 2010.

Saga was the most visible direct insurance provider as its share of voice increased by 19%; therefore, it moved up from ninth place to third.

MoneySupermarket most followed brand in social media

To gauge social media interaction with brands, Greenlight monitored the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the top 15 brands in its integrated league table to assess how many fans and followers each has.

MoneySupermarket remained the most followed brand. Since October 2010, it has managed to attract more than 3,000 new followers to its social media networks. In addition, it was the most interactive brand in January, cumulatively producing 108 posts and tweets. Content included promotions of specific insurance products available on its comparison site for consumers to choose from.

Research by The Customer Respect in March 2010 established that there were over 42,000 followers for major insurers on Twitter which in Greenlight’s view signifies the importance of engagement with consumers in social media.