Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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April 15, 2008
Google Book Search on the rise
Recently, Google announced that it has released an API which enables websites to link to the books within its Google Book Search functionality. This allows users to preview the book in question in a similar way to the ‘search inside’ feature used by Amazon. Over the last four weeks, Internet visits to books.google.co.uk have increased by 73% as result of this change, and overall visits to the site have trebled year-on-year. The volume of page impressions has also increased by 24% since the beginning of March.
It is interesting to note that until recently Internet users in the UK were visiting both books.google.com and books.google.co.uk properties of Google Book Search, with each site capturing a similar amount of traffic over the year. However, since the API launch, visits to the .co.uk property have increased steadily, whilst visits to the .com property have decreased.
Google Book Search UK is also becoming less reliant on Google search properties for traffic, with 23.9% less upstream traffic from www.google.co.uk year-on-year. At the same time, visits from Google Scholar have increased, and the site has become the second largest driver of upstream traffic after Google UK. This shift in sources of traffic may also be responsible for the changing demographic profile for the website. Visits from users within the 55+ age bracket have increased by 53% since Oct 2007, while at the same time visits from the 35-44 age bracket have decreased by 45%.
Not all books featured with Google Book Search are available to read, and a number of books have a summary and links to online book sellers. This is having an increasing impact on the online book shopping industry, with traffic from the website to the Shopping & Classified – Books category increasing four-fold since April 07. Amazon UK is benefitting the most: it is the number one downstream website from Google Book Search, capturing one in twenty visits last week.
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:00 PM
Posted to Books | Demographics | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
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Comments
It is interesting to note that until recently Internet users in the UK were visiting both books.google.com and books.google.co.uk properties of Google Book Search, with each site capturing a similar amount of traffic over the year
Posted by: homeinczechr at April 23, 2008 10:26 AM
