The leading U.S. paid search term in August 2008 was “ebay”, receiving .12 percent of paid clicks among all Web sites according to Hitwise.
The top organic search term was “myspace” which received 3.10 percent of organic clicks in August.
The search term driving the most traffic from paid listings was “eBay” at.12 percent, which was six times higher than the next largest traffic driver, which was “ebay.com”. This is an indication of both the high volume of searchers conducted on the term “ebay” and the tendency of eBay customers to click on sponsored listings.
“The eBay website is capturing over 88 percent of the online traffic generated by paid listings on the variations of the term ‘ebay’. This illustrates a keen understanding of the value of buying brand terms,” said Anita Gandhi, director of client intelligence at Hitwise.
“That said, the remaining 12-plus percent is no trivial amount in the context of hugely popular terms. More than 2,500 non-eBay websites bought traffic from eBay-related terms so companies need to know who is capturing their brand traffic.”
The top category receiving paid search traffic was office supplies with 43.15 percent of all paid search traffic. That was an 8 percent increase over July and the highest of paid search traffic among more than 170 categories that Hitwise reports on. The increase in paid traffic to the office supplies category is probably due to back-to-school promotions in August.
Other top categories receiving high percentages of paid traffic include travel agency sites, which received 35.32 percent of all paid search traffic and the telecommunications category with 30.97 percent.
