Online search has become the most influential source of information about home loans and almost 80 per cent of home loan applicants do some online research before contacting a lender, according to Google research.Google Australia's head of banking industry, David Hewitt, said many lenders had not recognised how this trend was changing the relationship between bankers and their customers.Speaking at IQPC's Loan Origination Excellence conference in Sydney yesterday, Hewitt said: "The home loan industry has not embraced digital. When you sit down to talk to a lender they ask you for information they already have and they tell you stuff you already know about."He said this was not meeting customers' expectations.Using a car industry example, Hewitt said that in 2000 Land Rover buyers made an average of 7.5 visits to a dealership before buying a car. In 2010 they were making an average of 1.3 visits before purchasing."Customers are doing their research online and they are going in there knowing what they want," Hewitt said. "Now the dealer has one interaction where they can get the customer to buy."He said banking relationships are changing in similar ways. Lenders have to be "present" when consumers go online.Google looked at home loan searches last year and found a big increase in searches for fixed rates, investment property finance, low-deposit loans, calculators and comparisons. "Two out of three borrowers used a calculator while they were researching their loan. It's a very good phone app to offer - very sticky."He said some banks had gone to great lengths to fit into their customers' lives. Barclays Bank was moving 25 per cent of its branches into supermarkets, and Danish bank Jyske Bank launched a television channel with a full range of news and current affairs programs.He said video was growing in importance. "We had 7.3 million visits to YouTube in Australia in January. That is the same level as the TV networks.