Mozilla Marketing

URL’s and branding of search marketing – Part II

By DR ⋅ August 22, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

(Note: This is the conclusion of a two-part post.  You can find part one here.)

In a previous post, I mentioned a variety of tests that were conducted through our search campaigns. One additional test that we looked at involved adding a “www” prefix onto our url’s. So instead of “Firefox.com”, we would test “www.Firefox.com”. In all cases, adding “www” increased the click thru of our text ads. One theory could be that even after all these years of seeing url’s in mutliple channels (e.g. online, in print, on television, etc.), users are still more comfortable with a url that has a “www” prefix.

Observation #3: Add “www” to all display url’s for both search and contextual text advertising

So what do these results say about Mozilla and Firefox branding? Using search marketing is not a perfect proxy for all other types of marketing url usage (e.g. offline). However, there are some guidelines to follow based on these search results. Where possible in most cases, especially when users are not actively searching out a browser solution (particularly online), consider using “Mozilla.com/Firefox” together to reinforce that Firefox is a part of and created by Mozilla. When a shorter url is needed, consider using Firefox.com instead of GetFirefox (e.g., offline use like a newspaper url or on a t-shirt), especially to unaware users. And if possible, consider adding “www” in front, especially in text search ads.