UK banks are not communicating effectively through search

With all this media frenzy about our impending doom we took a look at the banking sector from a reputation management point of view to see how effectively UK banks were communicating with worried consumers and shareholders in these times of trouble. Search volumes for the major bank brands have hit a peak in the last few weeks as the Google trends graph below clearly shows and this has happened in line with news flow on the banking crisis, showing once again the relationship between news coverage and search.

As we discussed in our e-Consultancy blog I wonder how many of these additional brand searches were consumers looking to open an account or buy a financial service. Of course we don't know the answer to that for a fact but we can take a wild guess and say that it's likely to be either very nearly zero or very actually zero. But it seems that this obvious point has been completely missed by the major banks who from an online perspective seem to be in complete denial. Presumably there are some smart people in the PR and marketing teams of these organisations. People who understand the relationship between news and search. People who understand that a website is a communications tool as well as a sales tool. But the message from Mr.UK Bank is very much SELL, SELL, SELL! Of the top ten UK bank sites only one, First Direct, mentions the word 'credit crunch' and has advice for its customers on what this means for them. Only two, Lloyds TSB and Abbey, talk about their financial strength and why your money is safe with their organisations. For all the others it's the usual fair of flogging current accounts, savings, insurance products or punting handy loans to help us increase our personal debt to a more respectable level. Of the ten leading banks we looked at, seven were running direct response PPC campaigns on their top line brand term - once again mindlessly flogging products to stakeholders who are actually looking for useful information about these banks at a time of crisis. Is my money safe? What's the value of my shares? Should I change banks? Interestingly Barclays is at pains to make it clear on its home page that people should be careful about securing a loan on a property as this can be a risky business. Advice from a bank on securing debt based on assets which can go down in value. Where do you start with that one?