Hitwise: EBay Leads Search Terms

New Hitwise data reveals that 86.7 percent of the top 500 unique search terms for the week ending Dec. 4 were related to corporate brands such as eBay and Wal-Mart. Nearly 11 percent of the top search terms related to generic products, such as sporting goods and furniture, followed by 2.5 percent for branded products like "Nintendo DS" and "PlayStation 2."

The top 10 corporate brand search terms during that week were "ebay," best buy," "walmart," "ebay.com," "target," "sears," "amazon.com," circuit city," "home depot," and "amazon," according to Hitwise. The top generic product search terms were "sporting goods," "furniture," "auto parts," "books," "prom dresses," "tires," "lingerie," "cell phones," and "flowers." According to Hitwise, one million total unique search terms drove traffic to shopping sites in the first week of December.

Search market share leader Google accounted for 4.26 percent of all visits to shopping sites during the week of Dec. 4, while Yahoo! Search contributed 2.24 percent of all visits, and MSN Search 0.54 percent. That Google contributes nearly double the number of downstream traffic to shopping sites makes sense, given that Google has nearly twice the search market share of Yahoo!, according to November Nielsen//NetRatings data. Google's share of the market is 51 percent when it is paired with America Online, compared to Yahoo!'s 29 percent share, when paired with MSN Search.

Overall, the top shopping categories referred to by the three major search engines were rewards and directories, which includes comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, and auctions and department stores, which includes eBay.com and JCPenney.com.

Google sent a higher share of its traffic to books, sports and fitness, and music sites, while Yahoo! Search sent a higher share of its traffic to video and games, and automotive and classifieds sites, and MSN Search sent most of its traffic to apparel and accessories, house and garden, and appliances and electronics sites.

"The leading search engines vary in their strength to refer traffic to certain categories versus others," said Bill Tancer, Hitwise vice president of research. "Marketers should carefully consider the nuances of each engine."

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