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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Christmas 2008 Retail Analysis: Electronics Retailers Most Active on Paid Search

February 03, 2009

Appliances and Electronics websites enjoyed the strongest growth in the retail sector over Christmas, with Australian visits increasing by 27.2% amongst all websites comparing December 2007 and December 2008. Underpinning the strong performance of visits to Appliances and Electronics websites was a significant investment in paid search traffic by electronics retailers.

In a Hitwise portfolio of the top 100 product search terms driving traffic to the Shopping and Classifieds industry, electronics-related terms accounted for 63.59% of paid clicks (4 weeks ending 27 December 2008). The top 100 product search term portfolio represented 5.86% of all paid clicks to Shopping and Classifieds websites.

Top 100 Product Search Terms to Shopping and Classifieds by Product Category

· Competition on leading paid terms was fierce, with paid rates (versus organic traffic) ranging from 18.54% ('Music') to 56.37% ('Tickets).

· The leading product search term was the 'iphone', attracting a paid search rate of 69.02%. Other leading product terms included, 'wii', 'ipod', 'tomtom', and 'navman'.

· Google was responsible for driving 20.34% of paid clicks to the top 100 product search terms; followed by Live with 0.69% and Yahoo! Search with 0.56% (Search Engine analysis is on respective Australian and .com properties).

In addition to capitalising on the peak shopping period for the year, the strong activity on pay-per-click campaigns by retailers may have been motivated by the Government stimulus package before Christmas; retailers were looking for a boost in consumers spending on presents. Retailers will need to monitor and adjust their search marketing efforts in response to any spending incentives provided by the Government this year.

Update 6 February:

Based on feedback here is clarification of the Search Engine Analysis provided above:

Paid clicks represented 21.79% of search traffic to the top 100 product search term portfolio. If we look at the total clicks sent, including both paid and organic, Google represented 93.17%, Live 3.61% and Yahoo 2.3 % of traffic.

We'll be releasing a Hitwise APAC Christmas 2008 Retail report later this month so stay tuned.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:28 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Shopping and Classifieds