Abstract

Search advertising is a major area of the online advertising market that is growing rapidly every year. Despite the importance of search queries entered by consumer, few studies have examined the influence of search queries based on real consumer data. In this study, we categorize search queries entered by real consumers into three main categories based on their characteristics (brand-query, category-query, search journey), and we compare the differences in the number of clicks, payments, and pay-per-click (conversion) rates for specific level of the search query categories. The results show that for brand-queries that include the target brand name in the query, the more specific the queries, the lower the number of clicks and payments, but the higher the conversion rates. However, for category-queries, which are searches within a product category without a target brand name in the query, we found that the more specific the queries, the lower the number of clicks, payments, and conversion rates. Finally, for search terms that reflect the consumer decision journey (i.e., search journey), we found that the later in the journey, the higher the conversion rates. These findings extend the decision journey and query research by showing the differential impact of the new search query taxonomy and each level of concreteness of different query characteristic, and suggest effective search advertising strategies.