• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

eBay Top Paid Search Term in August

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 September 2008, 12:00 CDT

The top U.S. paid search term in August 2008 was 'ebay', receiving .12 percent of paid clicks(1) among all websites reported Hitwise, an Experian company. The top organic search term was 'myspace' receiving 3.10 percent of organic clicks in August.

Top 5 Paid and Organic Search Terms among All U.S. Websites ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rank Paid Terms Clicks Organic Terms Clicks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 ebay 0.12% myspace 0.78% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 ebay.com 0.02% craigslist 0.42% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 home depot 0.02% myspace.com 0.29% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 map quest 0.01% youtube 0.26% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 people search 0.01% ebay 0.23% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Note - data is based on the percentage of paid and organic clicks generated by all search terms within all industry Categories for a four-week period ending Aug. 30, 2008 based off of the Hitwise sample of U.S. Internet users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Hitwise ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The search term driving the most traffic from paid listings was 'eBay' at .12 percent. That was six times higher than the next biggest paid traffic driver, which was, in fact, 'ebay.com'. This is an indication of both the high volume of searches conducted on the term 'ebay' and the propensity of eBay customers to click on sponsored listings.

"The eBay website is capturing over 88 percent of the online traffic generated by paid listings on the variations of the term 'ebay'. This illustrates a keen understanding of the value of buying brand terms," said Anita Gandhi, director of client intelligence at Hitwise. "That said, the remaining 12-plus percent is no trivial amount in the context of hugely popular terms. More than 2,500 non-eBay websites bought traffic from eBay-related terms so companies need to know who is capturing their brand traffic."

Top Categories Receiving Paid Search Traffic ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Percent Category Aug-08 Jul-08 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shopping - Office Supplies 43.15% 39.81% 8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Travel - Agencies 35.32% 39.28% -10% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Business - Telecommunications 30.97% 28.77% 8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Business - Legal 30.72% 32.18% -5% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pharmaceutical and Medical Products 30.43% 29.95% 2% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Note - data is based on the ratio of paid to organic traffic generated by all search terms within each category for a four-week period ending Aug. 30, 2008 based off of the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Hitwise ----------------------------------------------------------------------

From an industry perspective, the Office Supplies category received 43.15 percent of all paid search traffic for the four weeks ending August 30, 2008. That was an 8 percent increase compared to July 2008 and the highest percentage of paid search traffic among more than 170 categories that Hitwise reports on. The increase in paid traffic to the Office Supplies category is likely due to back-to-school promotions during the month of August. Other top categories receiving high percentages of paid traffic included Travel Agency sites, Telecommunications, Legal and Pharmaceutical websites. The Telecommunications category received an 8 percent increase in August, from July, while Pharmaceutical and Medical Products received a 2 percent increase.

New Paid and Organic search term data

Hitwise has launched a new Hitwise Search Intelligence(TM) product which includes new reporting features on how people search in over 170 industries in the U.S. across all major search engines.

"In order to grow and protect their share, Marketers need an understanding of consumer purchase intent as well as insights into their competitor's search activity," said Marc Johnson, chief marketing officer at Hitwise. "One of the new capabilities of Hitwise Search Intelligence is the addition of Paid and Organic data to help marketers better understand their competitor's strategies on a search term, website or industry level."

Other new capabilities within Hitwise Search Intelligence(TM) include:

-- Fast Moving Search Terms to identify emerging trends in consumer search behavior on a weekly basis. Hurricane Ike was the fastest moving search term for the week ending September 6, 2008.

-- Advanced Portfolio Features to manage, chart and trend keyword portfolios over time including paid and organic rate across a group of terms, keyword breakdown, search engine share and searches vs. clicks. These allow marketers to analyze critical search terms as a group rather than on an individual basis.

-- Advanced Filtering of search terms by search engine to include and exclude terms in results (e.g., branded terms) and by paid and organic terms.

For a demonstration of the new features please contact Hitwise today.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

(1) A Click happens when someone searches on a term, and then immediately goes on to another site.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category