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E-shoppers turn to Google for search

By Reuters
Los Angeles, 12 Jan 2006

Online shoppers picked Google as their search engine of choice this December while making their holiday Web purchases, according to a report issued yesterday.

Internet measurement firm Hitwise found that 11.1% of all December shopping-related visits originated with Google, a 28% jump over last year. But online auction giant eBay was the biggest driver of traffic to shopping sites, generating more than 13% of retail traffic.

Search engines Yahoo Search and Microsoft`s MSN Search drove 4.05% and 0.79% of retail visits, respectively.

Online retail giant Amazon.com, which is the second most visited online shopping site after eBay, generated only 0.75% of visits to other shopping retailers, Hitwise found.

Some 18.3% of all visits to shopping and classified Web sites originated with search engines.

Hitwise found that eBay, Amazon.com, Google`s online shopping site Froogle and Shopzilla`s BizRate were the four most popular online shopping sites originating from Google in December, representing 18.1% of the traffic to retailers generated by Google.

Hitwise also found that searches containing the word "iPod" during the holiday season rose 175 over last year. On Tuesday, Apple Computer attributed a 63% jump in its holiday quarter sales largely to the success of the iPod and said 42 million of the devices have been sold to date.

Visits to music download sites surged on Christmas day, Hitwise found, rising 172% over last year. For the week ending 7 January, Apple`s iTunes was the most popular among the top seven music downloading sites with 39% of visits, followed by Wal-Mart Stores` Walmart.com with 14%.

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