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Classifieds Traffic Soars in Recession
April 02, 2009
Last week we published a report on the Classifieds industry. Yesterday we issued a news release with some of the findings and I wanted to share some those findings here as well. Classifieds is one of the fastest growing industries with visits up 84% year over year in February 09. The following chart illustrates that the growth is steady and constant over the past three years:
The growth is fuelled by growth in visits to Craigslist and localization of existing classifieds.
To better understand the category's growth, we created two custom categories, Craigslist Cities, which includes over 300 local versions of Craigslist, and All Other Classifieds. The following chart plots market share of visits to these two categories over the past year. (Note that visits are plotted on two different axes to allow for comparison between the much larger Craigslist Cities category and the smaller All Other Classifieds).
Market share of US Internet Visits increased 90% to the Craigslist Cities custom category year over
year in February 2009 while visits to All Other Classifieds grew 22%.Visits to All Other Classifieds had been declining for most of 2008 with visits starting to increase in January and February. This suggests that the worsening US economy may be boosting visits to classifieds websites, and contributing to the recent up tick in visits to both Craigslist Cities and All Other Classifieds.
In terms of what is fuelling the growth for Craigslist, it appears to be new localized versions and an increase in visits from income groups. Craigslist tends to attract wealthier households but the site's growth is coming from lower income groups: This suggests that Craigslist may become less of a destination site for wealthy people and more of a necessity for lower income groups as the economy continues to sour.
The report also dives into acquisition opportunities from search and studies the auto, real estate and employment classifieds verticals more closely. You can request a complimentary copy of the report here.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 07:54 AM
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In Categories Shopping & Classifieds
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Demand for classified sites has increased dramatically, according to a report released by Hitwise. Its [Read More]
This makes sense. As people tighten up their budgets they will hunt even more for used items and bargains.
Posted by Nick Stamoulis | April 3, 2009 01:19 PM