In the aftermath of last week’s rioting across England, one of the knock-on effects of the looting and vandalism caused was a noticeable increase in searches for home insurance.

UK Internet searches for all variations of home insurance increased by 14% between the week ending 6 August and the week ending 13 August 2011.

Last week saw the highest peak of online searches for home insurance so far in 2011, 7.5% ahead of the January spike which is traditionally the biggest peak of the year for the home insurance industry. The generic term ‘riot insurance’ was the 59th fastest moving insurance search term of the week, with 1 in every 500 insurance searches in the UK containing the word ‘riot’. Interestingly, despite the emerging trend of riot insurance search terms, virtually all of the traffic came from organic links for the top search variations, indicating a missed opportunity for insurance companies with their PPC spend.

Only Barclays home insurance capitalised on this search trend using paid search to receive traffic from the term ‘riot insurance’. Specifically within home insurance the fast moving search terms were for home insurance, mobile home insurance and for buildings insurance.

Within the branded search terms, ‘tesco home insurance’ was the fastest moving search term followed by ‘swinton home insurance’, ‘natwest home insurance’ and ‘direct line home insurance’. For more finance industry insight Hitwise clients can download the quarterly finance report and you can follow us on Twitter for the latest data insights.