Social Networking Sites Beginning to Drive Shopping Visits Hitwise recently announced that Google was the top U.S. search engine responsible for 14.93 percent of
U.S. upstream visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006, while Yahoo! Search was the second most popular, accounting for 4.69 percent of upstream visits for
that week.
Top U.S. Search Engines
Sending Traffic to Shopping and Classifieds Websites(week ending 08/26/2006) |
Search Engine | Domain | Upstream Share Percentage |
Google | www.google.com | 14.93 |
Yahoo! Search | search.yahoo.com
| 4.69 |
MSN
Search | search.msn.com |
2.33 |
Source: Hitwise |
Social networking site MySpace.com accounted for 2.53 percent of all U.S. upstream visits to Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006, up from 1.28
percent six months ago. In that period, the market share of visits to MySpace.com has increased 67 percent among all websites, and MySpace.com captured 4.88 percent of all U.S. visits for the week.
The top Shopping and Classifieds websites that were visited after MySpace for the week were eBay, Amazon.com, Gateway, Walmart.com, and Craigslist.
Bill Tancer, General
Manager of Global Research at Hitwise, concludes "Search is a proven method of acquiring traffic and Google is the leader in driving online retail site traffic... (but) with the growth of MySpace and
others, online retailers should expand their focus beyond search to consider social networking sites as a source of additional traffic."
The top three brand search
terms in the Shopping and Classifieds category were eBay, Craigslist and Walmart. The top three product search terms were Barbie, iPod and Heelys.
Top Search Terms Sending Visits to U.S. Shopping & Classifieds Category Websites( four
weeks ending August 26, 2006) |
Rank | Brands | Generic Terms | Products |
1 | ebay | lingerie | barbie |
2 | craigslist | sex toys | ipod |
3 | walmart | halloween costumes | heelys |
4 | ebay.com | auto parts | crocs |
5 | target | textbooks | bratz |
6 | best buy | shoes | lego |
7 | amazon.com | furniture | webkinz |
8 | amazon | cell phones | bowflex |
9 | home depot | checks | proactive |
10 | sears | flowers |
air force ones |
Source: Hitwise |
For more data from Hitwise, please visit here.