Hitwise reports that downstream traffic to Google Checkout is up 30% in the past four weeks, with the number one store, by far, being Buy.com. Buy delivered 18.3% of Checkout’s traffic, with number 2 Dick’s Sporting Goods way behind at 4.8%. Of course, Google’s major “Free Money” promotion is the biggest thing driving people to use the service, and with it running until the end of December, we’ll have to wait for January numbers to see if there is a big drop-off.
- Paypal could be considered the nearest competitor to Google Checkout, but Paypal is still dependent on eBay for the majority of its traffic: for the week ending 11/18/06, 70% of Paypal’s upstream traffic came directly from eBay.
Both Buy.com and Jockey sent 16% and 7% of their respective traffic to Google Checkout last week, which seems like a very high conversion rate. Both sites are promoting the $10 off Google Checkout offer on their home pages, which indicates that the offer could be increasing conversion rates. The other sites on the chart are only showing the offer on the checkout page itself.
Google, with its deep pockets, is effectively buying traffic for its Checkout service, and smart retailers are using the offer to increase their conversion rates, but it could be a long time before it reaches Paypal’s traffic levels – the market share of visits to Paypal was 96 times greater than for Google Checkout last week (week ending 11/18/06). Possibly Google’s promotional efforts that will launch on Monday 11/27/06 will help.
Google Checkout Free Money coverage:
Google Tops PayPal In Money Wasting War – 11/22/2006
PayPal 2 Google: We Can Throw Twice As Much Money Down The Toilet! – 11/20/2006
Is Google Desperate With Checkout? – 11/03/2006
Tag:
Add to 
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
Visit the InsideGoogle blog.
