Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
« Internet Usage Data as a Measure of Offline Advertising Effectiveness - (Part 1 of 3) | Main | Paid and Organic Search: Profile of MoneySupermarket (Post 1 of 3) »
September 28, 2006
Will Referrals from Search Engines to Retail Websites Reach 35% by Christmas?
Yesterday, we issued our predictions for growth of the retail category at Christmas this year. One of the predictions is that search engines will account for 35% of UK referrals to the retail category in December 2006, up from 30% in December 2005. I want to dig into that prediction a little further here.
The following chart shows an incredible growth curve - illustrating the increase in share of upstream visits to retail websites on a monthly basis from February 2005 to August 2005.
- In December 2005, search engines accounted for 30% of visits to retailers. That figure had reached 34% in August 2006.
- That growth is being driven by Google and Yahoo! Search.
- Google (combined UK and .com) accounted for 20% of visits to retail websites in December 2005 and more than one quarter of visits in August.
- Yahoo! Search is the second largest search engine in terms of referrals to retail sites, accounting for 2.2% of upstream category visits in August. Yahoo! Search (combined UK and .com) has also seen its importance to retailers increase since Christmas, accounting for 48% more visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category in August 2006 compared with December 2005.
We based our prediction that search engines will account for 35% of visits to retail websites on analysis of this and other data back 24 months
Most retailers will see a larger proportion of their own visits coming from search. eBay, which accounted for 24.4% of all UK visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites in August, received 30.62% of its upstream visits from Search Engines in August. eBay is therefore pulling down the category average. Apparel and Accessories websites received 38.79% of their visits from Search Engines in August and that figure was 41.44% for Video and Games websites.
All of this points to a good Christmas for the search engines.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 07:56 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/329.
Comments
Heather,
Interesting stuff, with Google search showing as the big winner in this, but how are the price comparison sites doing? Has this affected their search engine upstream traffic and/or their overall site traffic - and does the analysis below reflect shifts in consumer behaviour (and brand awareness), or simply changes in search results driven by the engines themselves ... ie disintermediating the intermediaries?
Foolproof.co.uk have said that the most important factor for almost all companies when trying to get visitors to their websites was to have their website appearing in the results. Brand matters, but for all but the biggest brands, if they aren't in the results when the user taps in a search, the brand will be ignored.
This might seem obvious, but it shows just how much power the search engines have over the types of website that get visits and the power that they have to affect the profitability (or not) of individual companies by a small change in the algorithm.
A couple of years ago I read research that said that users
"thought they didn't like affiliate sites... but the reality was that they did"
This statement was made on the basis that lots of users happily transacted through affiliate sites.
However, this statement was wrong; the reality was that users didn't like affiliates, but because they were directed through affiliate sites that was what they used.
My hunch is that price comparison sites are not doing so well algorithmically and that the retailers are doing better. So my guess is that users aren't actively searching for retailers in preference to comparison sites, but they are clicking on the results they are given....
Posted by: Richard Barber at September 29, 2006 08:14 AM
Richard, Thanks for your question and comment. In answer to your first question, price comparison sites were refering roughly the same share of traffic referals to retailers in August 2006 as in August 2005. Year on year our Rewards and Directories (where these sites are housed on Hitwise) category has accounted for about the same share of referals (up 0.73% year on year) at 4.79% of upstream visits to retail websites in August 2006.
If consumers didn't like price comparison sites, presumably they'd either ignore the listing on the SERP or click the back button once they got to the price comparison site.
You are right to point out that consumers may state a preference for one thing but do another. A common quandry for researchers. Sometimes analysing behaviour can be a very good input for measuring preference.
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments and for contributing to the conversation.
Cheers,
Heather
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at October 1, 2006 11:03 PM
