The big three search engines - Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and MSN Search (MSFT), now account for over 20 percent of all visits to shopping sites, according to Online Media Daily, citing new research data from Hitwise. The total was up a lot from last year; which was around 13 percent for 2005.
Google itself accounted for almost 15 percent of the U.S. traffic sent to shopping sites for the week ending Aug. 26. This is up from close to 10 percent over last year.
The study also showed that social networking sites are starting to be traffic agents also, as MySpace is sending 2.53 percent of the traffic to shopping sites; almost double what it did just six months ago. MySpace is also sending 1.39 percent of traffic to news sites.
While these statistics are interesting, it would be more relevant to know if the searches were organic or paid. This would give us a better understanding of whether it was consumer or business driven traffic.
Comment Preview