June 06 2007

Top 10 US paid search marketers are retailers

E-commerce sites are the most frequent users of search engine marketing, with each of the top ten search engine marketers in the US being either retail or comparison shopping sites, according to research by comScore.

The research study, based on the March 2007 comScore qSearch Marketer report, reveals that nearly 20 billion sponsored links were served to US internet users from the top search engines in March. eBay.com is leading as the top search engine marketer with 802 million sponsored link exposures.

The top ten paid search advertisers - eBay.com, Smarter.com, Shopping.com, Bizrate.com, Amazon.com, Dealtime.com, Shopzilla.com, Target.com, Nextag.com and Shop.com - generate 16% of all sponsored links.

The majority of the click-thrus to these retail sites was directed from Google (53.8%), followed by Yahoo at 27.2%. Although accounting for a smaller share of total click-thrus than Google and Yahoo, both MSN and AOL generated more than their fair share of click-thrus to retail sites. Specifically, MSN Web Search was 17% more likely than expected to direct searchers to retail sites, while AOL Search was 20% more likely.

While these figures relate to US sites and US internet users, most of the top 10 retailers and shopping comparison sites also operate in the UK.

James Lamberti, Senior Vice President of comScore Search Solutions commented: "Search marketers need to understand the dynamics of their industry with respect to where their click-thrus originate, as certain search engines could have stronger performance relative to the overall search market."

Emma Herrod