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Google: Does Search Data Indicate a Recession?
February 26, 2008
The news is buzzing this morning, starting with a report from UBS that alleges that Google's paid clicks are down in January. Analysts from a number of firms have been speculating that this may be a sign that a slowing economy is affecting search.
Not so fast.
If a recession is in fact affecting search, we should see a drop in the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites (our Shopping & Classifieds category). The following chart shows the percentage of traffic over the last three years actually increasing.
As you can see, Google traffic to retail, on a monthly basis, is on the increase compared to previous years. If we focus in on daily data (year-over-year comparison) we see that Google traffic to retail is also up on a daily basis when we compare January/February 2007 with 2008.
Posted by Bill Tancer at 01:42 PM
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Comments
Nice, Bill. You don't even reference where the data came from and who produced it. God forbid you should reference a competitor. Psst ... it came from comScore! But shhh, don't tell anyone.
disclaimer: I worked at comScore a few years ago, but don't have any connection with them now.
Posted by Michael E. Rubin | February 26, 2008 09:54 PM
Bill,
Seems like we should look at brand terms in key categories to see if there is drop off Y/Y
Also, would be interesting see if there is an increase in terms associated with recession - debt consolidation, pay day loans, etc. May be better indicator
Posted by Sam | February 27, 2008 02:58 AM
If a recession is in fact affecting search, we should see a drop in the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites
Wouldn't Google algorithm and PPC adjustments affect this metric? Presumably Google now works even harder to increase the outbound paid traffic, so recession is hard to tease out of this data.
Posted by Anonymous | February 27, 2008 04:31 AM
The first graph shows the month over month increase of search traffic from Google to the Shopping & Classifieds category. Yes. What you have not taken into account, is that Google search market share has also been increasing over the past three years...
Posted by Andrea | February 27, 2008 06:31 PM
Our agency serves a large fraction of the IR500.
Our specialty is large-scale PPC for online retail
We're not seeing any Google slump.
From our POV, the the general economic retail malaise hasn't migrated online (yet?) -- and we hope it doesn't!
Full post w/ stats and charts and details:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2008/03/03/feb-2008-ppc-share/
Cheers
Alan
Posted by Alan Rimm-Kaufman | March 3, 2008 09:35 PM
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Could a recession instead increase search traffic?
Posted by Tim Cohn | February 26, 2008 06:06 PM