Brandify Survey Reveals Search Trends in Healthcare, Restaurants, and Retail

Last week Dustin Hayes and I conducted a webinar, "Vertical Search Habits of Today's Digital Consumers," that unveiled the results of our newly released study, "The Brandify Vertical Search Habits Survey." We surveyed more than 1,000 consumers to find out about their habits and preferences when using digital tools to search for healthcare providers, restaurants, and retail stores.

Our findings indicate that, although Google is the preferred digital platform for all local searches, alternatives such as Yelp and Facebook garner a significant proportion of the search audience, with notable differences between verticals.

For instance, Apple Maps is the most popular Google alternative for healthcare, whereas Yelp is used more often when consumers search for restaurants.

More key findings from the study:

• Consumers searching for medical providers and retail stores are most interested in basic contact info and hours of operation, in comparison with reviews, photos, and lists of products or services.
• Consumers searching for restaurants are most interested in menus and hours of operation, in comparison with basic contact info, reviews, and photos.
• 96% of consumers find reviews of restaurants useful, compared with 94% for healthcare and 89% for retail.
• 81% of consumers find photos to be useful for healthcare, compared with 92% for restaurants and 86% for retail.

The new study is available now for download and contains much more information about vertical search preferences and their impact on brand marketing.

You can also watch a recap of yesterday's webinar by visiting our replay page.