• June 6, 2007

Search engines in March served nearly 20 billion sponsored links to U.S. Internet users--with eBay.com leading the way with 802 million exposures, for a 4.1% share. The figures were released by comScore, based on its qSearch Marketer report.

The top ten paid search sites, accounting for 16% of all sponsored links, were all retail or comparison shopping properties. Following far behind eBay.com in second place was Smarter.com, with 366 million exposures and a 1.9% share. The rest of the top 10 in order were: Shopping.com, Bizrate.com, Amazon.com, Dealtime.com, Shopzilla.com, Target.com, Nexttag.com and Shop.com.

Google Web Search, accounting for 57.3% of all click-throughs, directed 53.8% of all click-throughs to retail sites. Yahoo Web Search directed 27.2%, MSN Web Search 10.4%, AOL Search 5.8% and Ask.com 1.6%. Since MSN only accounted for 8.9% of all click-throughs, comScore noted that it was 17% more likely than expected to direct searchers to retail sites. Likewise, AOL, with only a 4.8% share of all click-throughs, was 20% more likely.