Search Engines Drive Traffic to Shopping Sites

"While visits to shopping sites are claiming a record share of total holiday season Web visits, search engines are continuing to contribute high levels of shopping referrals."

According to the latest research, search engines are increasing the amount of traffic that they refer to other shopping sites. This shows the importance of shopping sites being represented effectively in the search engine rankings.

The article reports Google as being the most effective, "Google contributed 4.26 percent of visits to shopping sites last week, while Yahoo! Search contributed 2.24 percent and MSN Search 0.54 percent." This distribution is consistent with the search results that we have regularly reported in our classes.

Another interesting finding of the study is the differences in types of shoppers that frequent the different search engines. Special strengths were noted as follows:

· Google: Books, Sports and Fitness, and Music.

· Yahoo!: Video and Games, Automotive and Classifieds.

· MSN: Apparel & Accessories, House & Garden and Appliances & Electronics.