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And here’s the fascinating thing: two of the top searches were to the dockers.com/freepants URL, which was was never mentioned in the ad (and doesn’t exist). Yet enough people typed that in to a search box that it had “volcanic” hotness. Fortunately, Dockers either saw this coming or watched it happening and set up a redirect from that URL to its home page. Although they would have done even better by redirecting to the free pants page: http://us.dockers.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=4003744. Or on second thought, maybe they could redirect THAT crazy URL to dockers.com/freepants. Sadly, as with Boost Mobile’s spiking searches, Dockers is nowhere to be found for what the commercial caused people to search for. The Dockers site doesn’t appear for any of the four searches listed in Google Trends, although lots of other sites are taking advantage of the surge.
Why? Probably a combination of reasons that begin with its poor URL structure that includes lots of duplication and makes the content difficult to access. Also, the URL for sharing the video? http://us.dockers.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=4003744&camp=h-giveaway. If I might make a suggestion? What about instead using dockers.com/freepants?And here’s the fascinating thing: two of the top searches were to the dockers.com/freepants URL, which was was never mentioned in the ad (and doesn’t exist). Yet enough people typed that in to a search box that it had “volcanic” hotness. Fortunately, Dockers either saw this coming or watched it happening and set up a redirect from that URL to its home page. Although they would have done even better by redirecting to the free pants page: http://us.dockers.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=4003744. Or on second thought, maybe they could redirect THAT crazy URL to dockers.com/freepants. Sadly, as with Boost Mobile’s spiking searches, Dockers is nowhere to be found for what the commercial caused people to search for. The Dockers site doesn’t appear for any of the four searches listed in Google Trends, although lots of other sites are taking advantage of the surge.
Why? Probably a combination of reasons that begin with its poor URL structure that includes lots of duplication and makes the content difficult to access. Also, the URL for sharing the video? http://us.dockers.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=4003744&camp=h-giveaway. If I might make a suggestion? What about instead using dockers.com/freepants?Hi Vanessa, I would kindly like to point out that on all Dockers searches that I personally performed during and after the Super Bowl for their free pants giveaway that they appeared in top positioning for those keywords that are listed on Google Trends, which makes this article rather confusing.
Being that the information in the article above, specifically “The Dockers site doesn’t appear for any of the four searches listed in Google Trends, although lots of other sites are taking advantage of the surge,” is inaccurate (perform the searches) it makes sense to revise the article to reflect the true accuracy.
I did all four searches after the Super Bowl and the Dockers web site didn’t appear for any of them, although it did rank #1 for a search for [dockers]. It’s true that everyone sees different results at this point, so it’s possible some searchers did see dockers.com in the results for these, but I did not.
I just performed the search again and the dockers site does appear on the first page (although not the first result) for three of the searchers (but not for [dockers super bowl ad]). Which makes sense as between the game and now, lots of links have likely accrued to the site with that anchor text. But my point in the article was that a brand wants that visibility immediately when the commercial airs. And when I searched that evening, Monday, and Tuesday morning, the brand didn’t show up on the first page for any of the four.Ah – In reading your comment, it appears that I mistakenly interpreted your article as a Super Bowl vs. Search (as in PAID Search, not Organic Search) recap.
My comments were solely based on the brand’s strong command/coverage specifically in the Paid Search/Adwords arena; not organic search. In knowing now that your article is geared directly re: organic, it makes sense.
I assume that I am not the only one who interpreted the article in this manner as the title stated “Scoring Super Bowl 2010 Advertising: How’s the Search Visibility?” which to me in my profession automatically means SEM, not SEO. Any way to adjust the title to make it more clear to the masses? ;)
Apologies for the confusion – my point being that Dockers did a great job at ensuring Paid Search coverage for their Super Bowl spot… and now I realize that your article is specifically regarding ORGANIC search visibility.