6 Comments

Web 2.0 Begins To Take Over Search Engines…

Sep 1, 2006
by

I hate to say “TOLD YA SO!” :) But in “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition” we talk about where we feel the internet is going – away from search engines and more towards social network sites. That merchants will soon need to start focusing much more on these social networks sites for their traffic…

A recent report by HitWise reports that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail last week than MSN (#3 search engine)…

According to the TechCruch blog:

The Hitwise report puts Yahoo! as the source of 4.69 percent of traffic to online retail sites, MySpace as 2.53 percent and MSN search at 2.33 percent for the week ending August 26th. Google leads the pack at 14.93 percent.

This era of Web 2.0, social networking, user-generated content sites is really starting to get interesting now, think MySpace beats Yahoo soon?

Filed under: Online Marketing
  • Beth Kirsch

    Not all traffic is equal…the question in this case is if those customers bought and what is their lifetime value. Bet its not the same as search.

  • http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/ Fraser Edwards

    That's a good point Beth, but it's an amazing statistic whatever the value of the visitors. Myspace beating MSN on traffic at a time when we keep hearing from Microsoft that they are on the way up in search!

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    Nobody is going away from search engines. MySpace might have sent more traffic to retail than MSN but MySpace is not a search engine. And in the 4th quarter if you use the search function at MySpace you will be using Google. MySpace is a social network not a search engine. You're not doing an apple to apple comparison.

  • http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com Anik Singal

    Hey Everyone,

    Great insights and points, I agree that the quality of traffic is yet to be seen. But, seriously, social network sites have such momentum right now – this is worth watching.

    We can't just assume that social network site traffic is "no good" – that's an assumption…

    I just think it's neat that MySpace is running that kind of traffic!

    Jonthan, EXCELLENT point on Google being inside MySpace – guess Google is staying ahead of this one ;)

    Anik

  • http://www.jimmydaniels.com Jimmy Daniels

    Well, as one Techcrunch commentor said, he's a merchant and all of the traffic he gets from MySpace, and he said it was more than Yahoo and MSN, is from image hotlinking. They're just eating his bandwidth. I think we're better off waiting to see if any merchants are actually getting sales or leads before we declare MySpace a valuable property.

  • http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com Anik Singal

    Excellent point Jimmy…

    I'm surprised that there is not more data on the sales that a merchant may/may not be getting from MySpace…

    This would obviously not be hard to track at all.

    Calling MarketingSherpa? Someone…anyone?

    Anik