What you need to know: 

• Search continues to see an influx of consumers, however, the intent has shifted from purchase to research behaviour
• Categories such as travel and hospitality, unsurprisingly,  have "fallen off a cliff", while areas like home security, which experienced early an spike, have since plateaued as 'normality' sets in
• Despite Australian consumer preferences for bricks and mortar, online retail has shown sustained growth and a significant uplift towards the end of March
• Clicks for superannuation sites are 136% higher, peaking on the day of the announcement of early super access
• Insurance saw a mid-March crash in click through rates, resulting in clicks dropping by 19%

The full data set can be found here.

Indago Digital analysed circa 150 websites and more than 18 million unique search queries to understand how COVID-19 was affecting consumers with two themes:

• search ‘behaviour’ – are they still searching and if so, what has happened to search volumes?
• search ‘intent’ – are they still buying and therefore clicking through to acquisition-focused websites

Indago conducted  its analysis across 12 industry sectors with three distinct groups emerging:

1. Neutral Impact - those sectors which showed little or no change
2. Negative Impact - categories which were significantly affected, especially during late March
3. Positive Impact - industries that bucked the overall trend and show growth

Here's the lowdown:

Positive Impact

According to the research, some verticals not only avoided the negative impact of COVID-19 but are seeing growth.

Lending - Clicks were maintained through January and February then experience growth toward late March. As increasing financial uncertainty faces many Australians and businesses, Lending appears as a key growth area.

Retail - Despite Australian consumer preference toward brick and mortar, retail has shown sustained YoY growth as well as a significant upward trend toward the end of March across Impressions and Clicks, while CTR remains stable.

Indago found the surge in impressions also indicates a change in intent, with users looking for information around new store hours, product availability etc. the increase in Clicks demonstrates a sustained engagement.

They say retailers with e-commerce capability will be well-positioned to take advantage of this surge in activity.

Superannuation - Unsurprisingly as financial uncertainty and super accessibility conditions change, Indago reports a surge in search volume and engagement for superannuation.

Presenting the strongest growth case across all the verticals, super sees sustained YoY performance through the start of 2020, with growth taking off toward the end of February into March, with Impressions peaking at 72% higher and Clicks 136% higher YoY unsurprisingly peaking on the day of the announcement of early super access.

Neutral Impact

These verticals show little to no disruption and it’s simply business as usual.

Security – Year on year all metrics are up but COVID-19 has had no impact on any or these metrics. These clients and this vertical are currently unaffected.

Professional Services – Year on year, there are increases in search volume and that hasn’t changed in March. What has changed is intent with less people clicking on clients’ acquisition focused websites showing an increase in research terms. Sub-categories in this vertical include HR, legal and accounting.

Negative Impact

Indago says it's no surprise that this is the report's biggest category of verticals. Because of this, the sectors can be further grouped into two main trends: Changing Intent and Industry Collapse.

Changing Intent - In cases with changing intent, we see search volumes remain stable or even experience growth, while clicks through to websites drop significantly. This indicates a change in intent, people are still searching, but the nature of their enquiry has changed. Users might be looking for advice, browsing for alternatives or looking up new regulations. Google & Microsoft have both released various pieces of research around this.

B2B - Demonstrating this change in intent perfectly, B2B shows little change in search volumes but a significant drop in engagement with clicks decreasing by 34% YoY at the end of March.

Education –Interestingly overall growth dropped early on in the year and never recovered. As things continue to decrease toward March, we see a large spike in search volume around the 15th as uncertainty grows with click through rates dropping as intend moves away from conversion and to research.

Insurance - Initially showing fluctuating but positive YoY growth, Insurance also saw a mid March crash in CTR resulting in clicks dropping by 19% YoY. 

Impact to insurance seen below:

Real Estate - While YoY Impressions continue positive movement, there is a noticeable drop then stagnation toward mid March in Clicks, with users still browsing but with open houses and auctions cancelled, the market is effectively on hold until restrictions are lifted or alternative processes are established. Window-shopping continues through March while CTR drops.

Industry Collapse

These verticals experienced significant drops across all metrics, most occurring in March, but some since December or January, remember we had the bush fires. These were the first and most affected verticals by legislative changes, social distancing, and travel bans.

Travel - Unsurprisingly the hardest hit vertical, with global case numbers continuing to rise through January and travel bans being introduced from early February, there is a significant drop off in all metrics through to March. Once full travel bans come into effect, the decline continues to accelerate, before flattening out a to an eventual 85% drop in clicks and 47% drop in searches at the end of March. With bans still in place we expect this trend to continue through to April and for the foreseeable future.

Impact on the travel category pictured below.

Hospitality - While un-phased through key seasonal periods through Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Australia Day, hospitality starts to slow towards the end of February with increasing legislative measures announced. March begins the steep decline off the back of the first Australian deaths and increasing social distancing and venue restrictions as hospitality venues were forced to close in the last weeks of March. At the end of March clicks were down 80% in this vertical.

Leisure - Similarly, Leisure experienced YoY growth until mid January, but as cases continued to rise throughout February, we see search volume resist the seasonal trends experienced in the prior period. While Clicks continued to remain higher YoY through February, we see the trend dip then eventually crash in mid March, as continued measures are implemented, and venues are forced to close amid new regulations.