The government’s plan to stimulate spending by sending out checks may or may not have worked – new Hitwise data doesn’t help a lot there. But other stats indicate that Google fans are a little more prone than Yahoo users to pump money into the online economy.
Let’s start with the uncertainties. Although traffic to Hitwise’s Shopping & Classifieds category has increased significantly since May of last year, people can just as easily click on things after eating ramen as they can after consuming filet mignon.
Also, even though the rebates were only recently mailed, Heather Dougherty points out, “[S]o far in 2008, visits to the [Shopping & Classifieds] category have been up every month, signaling that the shoppers have always been out there.”
So on to the Google-Yahoo split for a little more in the way of solid answers. Heather Hopkins revisited a chart she first created in February, and both then and now, “Google’s relative audience strengths – i.e. the groups over-indexed on Google.com relative to the online population – are those that are among the most likely to have spent more than $500 online. This indicates that Google users are more likely to be big online spenders.”
We can suggest one reason for this: if Yahoo users are also Yahoo investors, they’re losing a lot of money thanks to the performance of the company’s stock. Regardless, the spending trend’s another indicator that Google edges out its new partner in a lot of ways.
