Internet research firm Hitwise, which tracks about 19,000 online retailers this year, says that social networking sites are becoming an increasing power in driving traffic to retail Web sites. Last year it was 2.9 percent of traffic, this year it has increased to 6 percent of traffic driven to retail sites.
"What we're seeing is a trend among social networking sites, particularly MySpace (NWS-A), becoming a home base for Internet users," said Bill Tancer, general 
manager of global research at Hitwise.
Tancer added that last year Hitwise tracked 10,000 online retailers, showing that there is a huge increase in e-commerce on the Web. "That shows that there's going to be a need for search and comparison shopping sites going forward because people need a way to navigate through all those sites."
For online retailers, search is still the number one source of traffic, with a 26 percent share of traffic driven to the sites. Google (GOOG) is still number one there. Interestingly, competitive online retailers send each other almost that amount of traffic too. Email adds about 10% to the traffic totals, while various Web directories, which include comparison shopping sites drive 5.6 percent of online retail traffic.For search engine traffic, the most popular categories they drive visitors to are food and alcohol, house and garden, and intimate apparel and accessories.
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