Google Drives One in 10 E-Commerce Visits

Search engines and directories drove about 18 percent of all visits to shopping and classifieds sites last week, according to new data from research company Hitwise.

Google alone accounted for almost 11 percent of visits to e-commerce sites that week, while Yahoo! Search was responsible for about 4 percent.

Last year, by contrast, Hitwise reported that around 4 percent of retail traffic came directly from Google, while around 2 percent came from Yahoo! Search.

Separately, Web analytics company Coremetrics reported Wednesday that sponsored search, e-mail, display ads, and other paid marketing initiatives accounted for a greater share of traffic to e-commerce sites during the last week in November than earlier in the month.

Overall, visits to retail sites increased by about 24 percent from the week ending Nov. 20 to the one ending Dec. 3. But visits that were driven by some type of paid marketing increased by 33 percent in that time.

Coremetrics compiled its data by looking at clickstream traffic to its 175 retail clients that operate Web sites, said Matt Lawson, director of product marketing at Coremetrics.

The vast majority of traffic to e-commerce sites--around 60 percent--came from users who directly typed the addresses into their URL fields. Natural search also accounted for about 10 percent of traffic.

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