November 9, 2007

SME’s spend Â£3bn on sites search engines can’t find

by Jan Harris

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UK SME's spend Â£3bn on sites invisible to search engines

New research by Microsoft’s adCenter unit finds that although UK SME’s are investing in websites, they are failing to help customers find them online.

The study found that small and medium sized businesses in the UK spend around Â£3bn on websites that cannot be found by search engines.

There are around 2.79 million websites belonging to UK small businesses, but 62% of these firms do not invest in search marketing campaigns, missing valuable sales opportunities.

The survey identified three main reasons for failing to implement search marketing campaigns - 44% of those surveyed said they were too time-consuming, 56% said that cost was an issue, while 33% believed that they would be too complicated.

This was despite 96% of small business owners saying that they used search engines themselves to find products and services on the web.

Microsoft’s research also confirmed the value of promoting websites on search engines, finding that 76% of SMEs which did promote their website secured an immediate increase in sales.

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