MySpace Gaining Ground Accounting for 2.53% of Visits to Shopping Sites

Hitwise: Google was the top U.S. search engine responsible for 14.93 percent of U.S. upstream ¹ visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006. Yahoo! Search was the second most popular search engine sending visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites, accounting for 4.69 percent of upstream visits for that week. MSN Search rounded out the top search engines accounting for 2.33 percent of visits to the category.

Top U.S. Search Engines Sending Traffic to Shopping and Classifieds Websites for the 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
Data for the week ending August 26, 2006
Source: Hitwise

Interestingly, 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 (week ending February 25, 2006). 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 ending August 26, 2006. The top Shopping and Classifieds websites that were visited after MySpace for the week ending August 26, 2006 were eBay, Amazon.com, Gateway, Walmart.com, and Craigslist.

Search is a proven method of acquiring traffic and Google is the leader in driving online retail site traffic. 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 for the week ending August 26, 2006 were eBay, Craigslist and Walmart. The top three product search terms were Barbie, iPod and Heelys for the four weeks ending August 26, 2006 (see table below).

Top Search Terms Sending Visits to U.S. Shopping & Classifieds Category Websites for the 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
Data for the four weeks ending August 26, 2006
Source: Hitwise

Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006 Pubk 20060831