America's 500 biggest companies are "woefully unrepresented in natural search", a new analytics report has revealed this week.

New York-based search and analytics agency Conductor studied the natural search visibility of Fortune magazine's 2008 Fortune 500 and found that their natural visibility during terms of greatest paid search investment was "extremely limited".

"With very few exceptions our research found that Fortune 500 companies are doing an extremely poor job of ensuring that their 'money' keywords are even moderately well represented in natural search," the report said.

The study found that 72 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have low or non-existent visibility for most of their advertised keywords with only eight per cent showing mid to strong presence.

Industries that fared worse in the report included management of companies and enterprises, wholesale trade and construction, while companies in the accommodation, healthcare and real estate industries received Conductor's highest grades.

Meanwhile, Brand Republic has said that a big budget is not essential for a smaller company to boost its search visibility.

But according to a report by Microsoft adCenter, nearly two-thirds of British small and medium-sized enterprises do not employ online search marketing.

Living Streams comment:  What an opportunity this article describes for SME.  I takes time to build up resilient natural (organic) ranking, but now is the time to start implementing an SEO strategy to be in a strong position for when the recovery begins.  Implement PPC campaigns now to bring in sales immediately to gain a bigger share of the currently smaller market.