Retail sector achieves a record 12% market share for the first time

Hitwise reports that this month, the market share of visits to shopping websites in the UK has broken through the 12% barrier for the first time.

With Christmas only weeks away, the online shopping sector now represents 12.13% of all visits by UK Internet users, based on data for the week ending November 20. This news comes despite reports that high street retailers are experiencing slower sales in the lead up to Christmas when compared with the past 2 years.
The latest monthly data from October 2004 also shows that traffic to shopping websites has increased by 24% in the 12 months since October 2003.

Other key findings from the Hitwise UK Online Retail Report 2004 are similarly promising for the online retail sector:


Visitors are spending longer on shopping sites this year: up from an average session duration of 6 minutes and 52 seconds in October 2003 to 7 minutes and 18 seconds in October 2004. The average session time for all sites is 6 minutes and 43 seconds.


The largest segment of traffic to shopping sites comes from Internet users who are in the combined Social Grades of ABC1 (51.77%), the traditional target for advertisers. This confirms the adoption of online shopping by the higher Social Grades.


UK users showed a greater preference for local retailers in October 2004 compared with October 2003. Visits to UK shopping sites accounted for 81.2% of all traffic in October 2004, 1.3% more than October 2003.


The report also makes some interesting findings for retail search:
Hitwise Search Terms data reveals that only 28% of people used a single word in their search, 30% used 2 words whilst 42% used 3 or more words.


32.9% of visits to shopping websites during October 2004 came from search engines and directories.


Of the top 1,000 most successful shopping search terms, 63.7% were brand specific (e.g., 'ebay'), 27.5% were generic product searches (e.g., 'mobile phones') and 8.8% were specific product searches (e.g., 'nokia 6260').


'ebay' is the most successful search term for the retail sector; with 10 different variations of 'ebay' appearing within the top 100 shopping search terms. 'Amazon' and 'Argos' are the second and third most popular keywords respectively.

Source: Hitwise

"What stops people clicking on my ads and costing me money?" - a question often asked by our search advertising clients.

"Because advertisers pay Google for each click on their advertisements, Google strives to ensure that each click is generated by a user legitimately interested in accessing the site being advertised," according to the complaint.

"Defendants...flagrantly abused (Google's service) by artificially and/or fraudulently generating ad clicks," the filing says. "These clicks were worthless to advertisers, but generated significant and unjust revenue for defendants."

The fraud is perpetrated in both automated and human ways. The most common method is the use of online robots, or "bots," programmed to click on advertisers' links that are displayed on Web sites or listed in search queries. A growing alternative employs low-cost workers who are hired in China, India and other countries to click on text links and other ads. A third form of fraud takes place when employees of companies click on rivals' ads to deplete their marketing budgets and skew search results.

Google spokesman Steve Langdon confirmed the lawsuit and said the company is vigilant in protecting its advertisers and the integrity of its programs.

"We have sophisticated technology that detects and eliminates fraud," Langdon said. "This lawsuit against Auctions Expert demonstrates the success of our antifraud system and that we will take legal action when appropriate."

Source: Cnet

Tom

UK Online has launched a new broadband service, offering a huge 8Mbps connection speed.

The new Broadband 8000 service is 120 times faster than dial-up and 16 times faster than the average broadband package.

Broadband 8000, which will initially only be available in metropolitan areas, costs £39.99 a month, with a one-off connection fee of £50. A wireless Ethernet router costs £69.99.

Tom

Today, GaZabo.com publicly launched its "One Time" payment option for pay per click advertising. For a one time fee of $100. advertisers will receive an unlimited amount of clicks, eliminating the need to ever fund their GaZabo advertising account ever again. A move other advertising portals would never even consider.

GaZabo

Tom

Here is a great page that will explain all that happens in Google adwords.

Google learning centre

Remember to please speak to us with regards to helping you create and manage search advertising accounts with Google and Overture.

How we can help you

Tom