The Search for the Holy Keyword: Newspapers, Retail Sites Join the Quest

Hitwise just released a study that shows search engines to be the source for nearly a quarter of newspaper website traffic, reports Mediapost. In March, there were a record 59.5 million unique visitors to online news sources, possibly due to the purchase of news-related keywords or more search-engine friendly article titles.

But: red light! Due to user fragmentation, traffic to the top 10 News and Media websites – like the New York Times – is actually decreasing. Moreover, increase in traffic to alternative news sources like blogs and is not necessarily driving an increase in ad revenue.

Categories that are profiting from the change in way users are finding information include health and medical (43%), education (41%) and food and beverage (38%). More importantly, retail sites are getting 25% of their traffic from search engines, with the top ten paid search advertisers being retail or comparison shopping sites like eBay, Amazon, and Shopping.com.

Says comScore Search Solutions’ James Lamberti:

It’s clear that retail e-commerce sites are the most aggressive in using sponsored search to drive traffic to their sites. Given that retail e-commerce is now a $100 billion a year industry, it’s not surprising that top online retailers are willing to bid for premium placement at the major search engines.

What categories need to play catch-up? How about business and finance, at a lowly 14%, and computers and Internet (11%)? But – if this is because people seeking information on these topics are using more personalized methods rather than blindly typing in "pizza hut" or "girls gone wild" into an engine, all the better. Will search become more focused in other categories? If so, how will SEO firms adapt their methods? 

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.