November 14 2006

Is it worth paying for search?

The share of referrals from search engines to retail websites is greater than six months ago, according to competitive intelligence company Hitwise. Highlighting the importance of being high up in the search rankings, the study of the search market also shows that Google and Yahoo! have increased their market share over the same time period.

"Consumers are increasingly using search engines to navigate the web," said Heather Hopkins, VP of research for Hitwise UK. "Google and Yahoo! Search, in particular, are seeing strong growth in the UK market," she continued. "Growth for these search engines seems to be organic, driven in part by toolbar usage but also growing familiarity with the Google and Yahoo! brands."

In the week of 21 October:

Travel agencies increased 7% to receive 39% of upstream visits from search engines.

The Appliances and Electronics category increased by 9% to 36% of upstream visits.

The Insurance category received 35% of upstream visits, an increase of 14% in the past six months.

Hitwise raises the question of whether paid search is a defining factor for a top ranking based on share of internet visits - this is something which individual retailers can answer for themselves - and test. Some of the top 10 players online amongst travel agencies, appliances and electronics companies and th insurance industry receive "a relatively small proportion of their search traffic from paid listings". For example, during the week of 21 October, 54% of traffic to cheapflights.co.uk came via a search engine, 29% of which clicked through from paid listings. How many of each type of visitor is converted to a paying customer though is another matter.

As expected, Google still leads the search engines, in terms of executed searches, with 78% of the market. Yahoo Search! has 8%, MSN Search 6%, Ask 5% and the rest make up the remaining 3%.

Emma Herrod