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Millions of dollars are spent each year on brand advertising and brand tracking -- but the internet introduces a host of new challenges that bedevil brand owners. While your competitor can’t legally take out an advertisement in the phone book under your brand name, when searching online for a brand we often see that brand’s fiercest competitors among the sponsored results.

The problem is enormous. According to data from Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service, one quarter of US Internet visits comes from a search engine. Branded terms make up the majority of internet searches, at 86% of US queries in September of 2008. And branded search is on the rise, up from 71% just three years ago.

With websites relying on search engines as the largest single source of traffic and with branded search terms dominating, it is no wonder that brand marketers are paying more attention to the results search engines present consumers for branded queries.

Hitwise analysis reveals that more than one in ten web searches for major brands send internet users away from the brand owner’s website, including to competitors and price comparison websites. In September, 87% of visits from the top search term for each of the thirty brands measured sent visits to the brand owner’s website.

As one might expect, the results vary greatly for each brand. For example, 96% of searches for “usaa” went to the USAA website and 92% of searches for “northwest airlines” went to the Northwest Airlines website. At the other end of the spectrum, a top 10 Appliances and Electronics retailer received 66% of visits from searches for its brand, a top 10 Insurance provider 78% and a top 10 Airline 75%.

The issue becomes more complex when we consider misspellings and searches that combine the brand name with a key product term in the search string. For example, while 96% of searches for “usaa” sent visits to www.usaa.com, searches for ‘usaa insurance’ sent only 78% of visits to www.usaa.com and 12% went to a price comparison website offering details on several competing products. And while 90% of visits from searches for “southwest airlines” went to the Southwest Airlines website, that figure dropped to 66% for searches for “southwest airlines reservations”.

In addition to competitive websites, brands are competing with social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube for visits from brand searches. Hitwise analysis reveals a 65% year-on-year increase in visits to Social Networking sites from searches for leading brands and a 3-fold increase over the past three years. Mobile phone retailers and brands need to be particularly aware of this. For example, 4% of searches for “virgin mobile” went to Social Networking sites and 2% of searches for “tmobile”.

Brand owners often find that brand terms are the highest converting terms to a site, meaning that visitors are more likely to make a purchase. As a result, visits from the brand name can have a real impact on the bottom line. But how can brand owners respond?

While the search engines will not arbitrate trademark disputes, the leading search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search) offer some protection to brand owners. Most ensure that advertisements do not use a trademarked term in the ad content. But these protections do not extend to misspellings. Another option is to write exclusion policies into terms with affiliates to prevent partners from bidding on the brand name.

Brand owners can benefit from monitoring competitor and affiliate listings in search results by performing searches and monitoring the sites that appear in the results. There are also services, such as from Hitwise, to learn what percentage of internet users click on your company’s advert versus your competitors’.

Most of all, if a competitor receives ever increasing numbers of visits from searches for your brand -- take action. Scrutinise effective advertisements or promotions offered by competitors and learn from them.

Finally, brand owners can take heart that search engine brand protection efforts can work. Just three years ago, consumers could regularly find lower airfares and rates for hotel rooms by booking through online travel agencies.

Airlines and hotel chains have tightened the reins on travel agencies and resellers to ensure that consumers can always find the best price by booking direct. Travel companies made very public commitments to offer the best price through the brand’s own website and these efforts appear to be working.

Analysis of internet search data reveals that compared with previous years a higher proportion of searches for travel brands are reaching the brand owners’ websites. For example, traffic from searches for the American Airlines brand three years ago made up nearly 4% of visits to Travel Agencies. That was down to less than 1% in September 2008.

In a time of increasing economic uncertainty and tighter budgets, online brand protection can help marketers make better use of money already spent on brand advertising.

Heather Hopkins is a visiting research fellow with GLOCOM and a member of the Hitwise Research team. Heather regularly contributes to a blog at www.ilovedata.com.