Week 8

This week I have been asked to assess how easy it is to find the ProDirect website using a search engine.  I will use 2 search engines for this, Google (www.google.co.uk) and Bing (www.bing.com).

First of all I searched “football boots” in both of the search engines.  The ProDirect website appeared first in both search engines.  In Google, it was the first and second results, with a link directly to the boots page of the website in second place.  In the Bing results, the boot page was third behind www.footy-boots.com.  This website appears to be popular as it is also third on Google.

JJB Sports, who I believe to be one of ProDirect’s largest competitors,was ranked fourth on Google.  I was quite shocked to find that not only did JJB not appear on the first page of  Bing, it did not appear at all on the first 5 pages of the Bing results.

ProDirect does not appear as a sponsored link on any of the search engines.  I think this is because they have realised that as their company and website are widely known and as it appears first on all of the search engines, there is no need to pay for sponsored links.

Littlewoods appears as a sponsored link on both of the search engines.  The website www.kickbacksports.co.uk/football appears as the top sponsored link in both of the search engines.

I then typed in “football equipment” into both of the search engines.  In Google, ProDirect appeared fourth in the list.  In Bing, it appeared at the bottom of the third page.  I think this is because ProDirect do not use as much resources marketing football equipment in general, but concentrate more on the football boots.  Again, ProDirect does not appear as a sponsored link on the search engines.  JJB Sports does not appear in the first page of both search engines.

When searching for “football boots”, I do not have any recommendations for ProDirect as they are first on the list.  However, I do believe that they should increase or change the tags that they are currently using for when the user searches for “football equipment”.  This is because on Google, the ProDirect website does not appear first, and on Bing, it does not appear until the third page.  Most users try another search or stop looking after the second page of results.

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