Internet search data is an excellent source of insight into what consumers associate with a brand as well as the “top of mindedness” of any particular brand. I did some analysis of the top search terms sending visits to Canadian banks to see how Canadians search for their banks.
The top search term sending Canadian traffic to Banks and Financial Institutions in the 12 weeks rolling to October 3, 2009 was “td canada trust” accounting for 5% of clicks to this industry. A close second, searches for “rbc online banking” accounted for 4.85% of clicks.

But while TD may take the top spot in individual search terms, when I aggregated searches relating to TD Canada Trust, Royal Bank and the other big banks, I found that RBC is actually the most searched for Canadian bank, capturing 26% of branded searches among the top 300 terms sending clicks to Banks and Financial Institutions websites. TD was second capturing 20%. The following pie chart shows the breakdown for the Big 5 plus Desjardins.

All but 10 of the top 300 search terms sending visits to Banks and Financial Institutions websites were branded terms. Most generic search terms related to the Canadian dollar exchange rate and they accounted for less than 1% of clicks.
Also interesting, Capital One’s URL, GetMyCard.ca was the #171 search term sending visits to Banks and Financial Institutions. The analyst team at Hitwise has done a bit of work in the past to help brand marketers use internet usage data as a measure of the effectiveness of offline advertising. This is a nice example of how awareness of a particular URL promoted in offline advertising can be measured over time and against peers.
Stay tuned for a follow up post on brand association for Canadian banks as measured by Internet search data.