Rapid tracking the Samsung S10 launch online

On the 20th February Samsung unveiled their Galaxy S10 phone, along with an exciting foldable tablet - the Galaxy Fold. Pre-orders for the S10 also kicked off on this day.

This saw a huge uplift in searches for the S10 as consumers clambered to secure their pre-order. Search volume grew to a whopping 1.24mn.

Focusing on the 20th February, we took a look at how this unveiling and pre-ordering played out using our two-hourly Rapid Tracking feature.

The long wait to pre-order

The below chart tracks the term ‘galaxy s10’ and shows the composition of page one features.

Each column represents the composition of the page one landscape in search every two hours, and each row represents the feature present for that position (i.e. Top Stories, Classic Links etc.).

Key

SERP Matrix

Text Ads show first place every two hours, except at 10am where Top Stories overtakes. Samsung were the only site bidding on ‘galaxy s10’ until 8pm when the s10 was FINALLY revealed, then we can see other sites bidding; Sky and Carphone Warehouse begin offering pre-ordering.

The SERPs get a bit more interesting around this time with Twitter cards appearing as people begin to discuss the phone on social media.

Video cards perform highly throughout the 20th, with speculative reviews from YouTubers and Top Stories appear throughout the day - Samsung can use this insight to identify who is covering their release and what their audience is being served at any time of the day.

Where did Samsung appear?

We can see where Samsung appears within the whole of page 1 by searching for Samsung’s URL.

They are consistently appearing for Text Ads, but only show twice elsewhere on the 20th with Classic Links at 8pm and 10pm.

Whilst dominating in Text Ads is great for maintaining consistent visibility, there is further opportunity to gain more traffic and save on cost by building your search presence organically in time for a release.

Seeing the landscape of the whole day

SERP Radar

Taking a look at Samsung’s performance across all the highest volume, most relevant product release search terms, we can see what percentage of each SERP feature appeared throughout the whole day, and what percentage and where, Samsung was present within that.

Again, we can see that they completely dominating the Text Ads, showing 48% of the time, and they had some visibility in Classic Links - 15.7%. The diversity of the SERPs reveals a huge opportunity to appear elsewhere on top of these.

For example, Video Carousel is performing very well for these terms - Samsung could gain more exposure by optimising its own video content with the aim of appearing here.

It seems that Samsung were in the right place at the right time throughout the day of their reveal, maintaining their top spot in the SERPs. This undoubtedly led to increased traffic and most likely contributed to the number of pre-orders they received directly from their site.

Having this insight in invaluable, not only to track how the campaign is unfolding in real-time but also to use in hindsight; who was covering you? Could you partner with these publications/influencers in the future? What content is ranking highly for your terms and can you create your own content to ensure you are featuring more on page one?

[icon-cta-banner colour='jazzberry-jam' headline="Electrical | Leaderboard " icon='/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/icon_leaderboard.svg' cta_action='/resources/market-leaders/electricals-uk-q1/' cta_text='View now']

[/icon-cta-banner]