Insurance rates for most Canadians saw a major increase at the start of the year. Insurance was again in the news over the weekend, when Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister, indicated that Ottawa will be cracking down on banks’ efforts to sell insurance products on their websites. Banks have long been restricted from promoting insurance products in their branches and Flaherty hopes to extend those restrictions to the web. How are Canadians searching for insurance online and what sites are they visiting from those searches?
The following table shows the top 10 search term variations for “insurance” (excluding searches employment/unemployment insurance and social insurance) in the twelve weeks to 17 April 2010:

As you can see, the top non-branded insurance search terms were “insurance quotes”, “car insurance” and “car insurance quotes”. Searches for these three terms have increased steadily since the start of the year. The share of Canadian internet searches for “insurance quotes” has increased 43%, for “car insurance” by 80% and for “car insurance quotes” by 60% (comparing 12 weeks rolling to 17 April 2010 and 2 January 2010). The increases may be a result of Canadians shopping around for insurance quotes in response to increased rates.
Where do consumers go after these search queries? For the branded queries, most consumers go to the brand owner’s website. For example, on searches for “td insurance” the top downstream sites were TD Canada Trust and TD Insurance. Similarly, most clicks from searches for “rbc insurance” went to an RBC website.
After the generic searches, consumers visited price comparison websites (Kanetix.ca, InsuranceHotline.com), insurance providers, and banks. For example, after searches for “insurance quotes” searchers clicked on links to Kanetix.ca, BelairDirect.com, Desjardins General Insurance and InsuranceHotline.com. After searches for “car insurance” consumers clicked to Kanetix.ca, BelairDirect and RBC Insurance.
Most of the banks have their websites structured so that clicks on the link for information on insurance products send visits to a subdirectory (i.e. www.tdcanadatrust.com/tdinsurance). Through custom reporting we could report on these clicks but for the purposes of this blog entry, I will use our syndicated data. RBC structures its page in a way that makes it possible for us to see where clicks are going. Last week, the #36 downstream website (receiving 0.07% of visits) from www.royalbank.com was www.rbcinsurance.com.
It will be interesting to see how traffic levels to insurance websites shift should these new restrictions be put in place.