Hitwise: Less Searchers Clicking On Search Ads?

Paid Search Traffic Share Down 26% from Hitwise reports that paid traffic from search engines is declining. Hitwise’s data said “in the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 – […]

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Paid Search Traffic Share Down 26% from Hitwise reports that paid traffic from search engines is declining. Hitwise’s data said “in the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 – representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks.”

It is important to note that search referrals overall are still climbing. However, most of that is due to the growth of people clicking on the organic/free listings and less and less on the paid listings.

The chart below shows the decline by category over the course of several months:

Paid Clicks Declining via Hitwise


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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