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Search engine advertising has a big impact on both online and offline sales according to an ROI Research study highlighted in Revenews. According to the results of the ROI survey, 49 percent of online sales and 42 percent of offline retail sales were influenced by paid search advertising. That is a substantial number, and it demonstrates how integral search engines have become to most shoppers.
Halloween apparently has ‘jumped the pond’ and is gaining in popularity in the UK, evidenced by spikes in internet searches for key Halloween terms such as “pirate costume” in both the US and UK. So what? Hitwise blogger Heather Hopkins says that retailers can learn important lessons by understanding the way in which consumers search.
By now everyone has probably heard the news on the Google, YouTube deal. Two weeks ago, Mark Cuban said anybody who would buy YouTube for $1.6 million is a moron. Yesterday on his blog, he said they are crazy for going ahead with this, and they are heading for the ultimate litigious nightmare.
But on the other hand…
Local search is afire, and the leaders are familiar names: Yahoo and Google. Unlike regular search where Google clearly dominates, the playing field for local search is evenly split between the two search giants with a share of about 30 percent each. Microsoft is third at 12 percent. Both Google Local and Yahoo Local use a map-based page. Indicate your search location and enter a search term such as “pizza.” Your map will populate with the names and locations of pizza restaurants in the vicinity.
A recent Hitwise report demonstrates the importance of search engines to online shopping. In all, search engines were responsible for more than 20 percent of the visits to e-commerce sites in the “shopping and classifieds” category. Google was the clear leader and was responsible for almost 15 percent of category visits. Yahoo was second with approximately 5 percent, and interestingly, MySpace won out third place over MSN Search with 2.5 percent of referral visits.