Paid Search Taking Recession Hit Down 26%
May 16, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik
In a recent NY Times article, paid search traffic is taking a hit from the past year. While on a daily basis, you have advertisers coming in and out of the paid search game, it seems the traffic to paid search is decreasing.
“According to the latest data from Hitwise, paid search traffic has taken a major hit in the last year. While, according to Hitwise, about 9.84% of the search engine traffic it registered in April 2008 came from paid clicks, in the four weeks preceding May 9, 2009, this number declined by 26% to 7.25%. Hitwise registered this trend across all of the categories it tracks, with the sole exception of paid traffic to site in its education category, where paid search results increased slights from 1.39% to 1.45%.”
“Paid clicks to major retail sites and travel agencies were down 20% and 25% respectively. Especially searches for brand names like “orbitz” (which went from 46.35% to 35.75%) or “walmart” saw strong declines in their share of paid clicks.
Searches for “home depot” registered one of the most stunning declines in paid clicks, as only 0.83% of searches went to a paid listing in the last four weeks, compared to just over 39% a year ago,” cites the NY Times.
Heather Hopkins, senior analytist at Hitwise states, “I looked at the top search terms sending visits to the three categories to compare rates of paid clicks year over year. Consistently, brand name terms (such as “travelocity”, “orbitz” and “walmart” saw a sharp decrease year over year in the share of paid clicks. For example, 35.75% of clicks on searches for “orbitz” were on paid listings in the four weeks to May 9, 2009. This compares to 46.56% in the same four week period in 2008. This represents a 23% decrease year over year.
Even more extreme, 0.83% of searches for “home depot” went to a paid listing in the four weeks to May 9, 2009 compared to 39.06% in 2008. Similarly, “usaa” saw 0% of clicks on paid listings in the last four weeks compared to 28.88% in the same period in 2008.”
