• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 7, 2006

Social networking sites including MySpace and Facebook are driving a bigger portion of traffic to retail sites than a year ago, according to new research by Hitwise. Social sites are driving more than 6% of retail traffic, up from 2.9% in 2005. MySpace alone accounted for about one-third of that traffic.

The increase in retail traffic reflects social sites increasingly becoming a starting point for Web users. "What we're seeing is a trend among social networking sites, particularly MySpace, becoming a home base for Internet users," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise. That trend in turn generates more traffic from social sites to online retailers.

Search engines continue to be the main avenue through which people navigate to Internet shops, driving nearly 26% of their traffic. Competing online retailers sent a nearly equal portion of visitors, followed by email services at 9.6% and Web directories, including comparison shopping sites, at 5.6%.

Tancer said Hitwise is tracking traffic to 19,000 online retailers this year compared to 10,000 last year, highlighting an e-commerce explosion. "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," said Tancer.

Google was by far the biggest search referral source--sending 16% of retail traffic, followed by Yahoo Search, with 4.8%, and MSN Search, at 2.2%.

The retail categories benefiting most from search engine traffic were intimate apparel and accessories, house and garden, and grocery and alcohol, according to Hitwise.