Enquisite raises $3.2 million round for search analytics service

Enquisite has raised $3.2 million in a first round to improve search advertising analytics tools.

The round was led by The Entrepreneurs Fund III, which is headed by Jeff Webber and focused on Web 2.0 software startups.

Richard Zwicky, president and founder of San Francisco-based Enquisite, said in an interview that the tools go farther than typical web analytics, helping to verify that an ad is effective in the same way that Nielsen verifies the impact of a television ad.

General web analytics engines place code within a web site. Enquisite differs in that it places its code on the search engine pages that come up when someone types in a keyword. The Enquisite software lets marketers see which keywords are driving traffic to a page and shows the page rankings. If a particular phrase winds up on page two of a search result, then Enquisite can show how the phrase can move up in the search result pages. The software works for both paid campaigns and natural search.

As an example, a company selling garden hoses may notice a lot of traffic generated by phrases that contain the word “coil.” It tweaks its marketing campaign to add the word “coil” and sees how it can move up in the search rankings to the first page. And as a result, far more customers click through. Zwicky explains some tricks in his own blog on the Enquisite site.

Customers can subscribe to the tools as a software-as-a-service. The company charges $49.95 a month for its Enquisite Pro package, which gets a customer 24,999 referrals. Pricing beyond that number is to be determined. Another feature of the reports focus on a search campaign’s “long tail.” Search marketers can use it to look at the distribution of search terms and constrain them as necessary to extract valuable data for what’s popular or what’s on the margins in terms of effectiveness.

Zwicky said the company has a base of 4,500 search marketing professionals using the tools. Founded in December, 2006, the company has ten employees and will use the money to add new offices and sales and marketing staff.