Paid Search Down, Social Media Up in the UK

Research from Hitwise

Based on the above chart, it looks like paid search traffic in general has fallen significantly. Goad does note that search engines are still the primary source of traffic for nearly all online retailers. It's just that the paid listings seem to be having a decreasing effect.

Meanwhile, the amount of traffic sites that fall under Hitwise's Shopping and Classifies category get from social networking sites has increased from 5.2% in March '08 to 7.1% in March '09. Furthermore, social networks are accounting for 58% more traffic than webmail providers like Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail.



All the more reason to Facebook may cut significantly into the advertising revenue of sites like Google. It'll be interesting to see the numbers in another year.