There's an interesting article over at MediaPost Publications that talks about the true value of brand name search terms. The article looks at information contained in a report put together by search marketing firm 360i that tracks the ultimate conversion rates for generic search terms and for brand name search terms.

From the article:

Although the highest conversion rates still came from searches where the user sought brand terms throughout--rates were 9.3 percent for searches where a brand term was both the first and last search made--the rates were only slightly lower when the search started on a non-brand term and ended on a brand term--8.73 percent.

"Generally, only the last term a search enters gets credit for the conversion, and brand terms are particularly prevalent toward the end of the search process," the report stated. "The non-brand terms [enter] earlier on in the process, which bring the consumer into the realm of consideration."

The article goes on to talk about the need for companies to put better tracking in place so that they can judge the true value of all phrases. Currently, most sites are only tracking the immediate conversion rates. That means that they're losing the ability to credit the keywords that lead a visitor to the site for information during the research phase and then return at a later date using the brand name.

The study also found that conversion rates increased when the user encountered the market's ads on more unique searches. "While the number of consumers entering multiple unique keywords accounted for 8.39 percent of the sample, these accounted for 19.2 percent of transactions," the study stated. "This disproportionate share can be attributed to the brand, web site or offering resonating across the breadth and range of their interests."

Yet another reason to attack organic search from the long tail side of things. Putting too much focus on the words and phrases that you *think* are delivering your best traffic may mean that you miss out on the lesser phrases that end up contributing to your sales in the long run.