Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Google Scores Big As An Online Retail Referrer
byA 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.
Online shopping continues to increase. Internet Retailer reports second quarter online retail sales surged 16 percent over the same period a year ago. Online retail growth is predicted to jump 20 percent in 2006.
According to SearchEngineWatch, Google is also maintaining its overall lead as the top search engine with a 43.7 percent share. Yahoo is second at 28.8 percent and MSN is a distant third at 12.8 percent. Hitwise research pegs Google at an even higher U.S. share reporting the search giant had over 60 percent of the total search volume followed by Yahoo with 22 percent.
