US paid search traffic share down 26%
A new US report from Hitwise indicates that the share of search traffic coming from paid listings is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic.
This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 – representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks.
This trend is apparent across 16 of the 17 Hitwise parent categories (ie Automotive, Food and Beverage, Health and Medical, etc). The only category that did not see a decline in paid traffic was Education, which received 1.45% of search visits from paid clicks compared to 1.39% last year.
In a separate report, Hitwise revealed that Google accounted for 72.4% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending 25 April 2009.
Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 16.3%, 5.7%% and 4%, respectively (see Google increases share of US searches in April).
Elsewhere, search management provider SearchIgnite published a report in April which found that US ad spending among its clients was down 4% in the first three months of the year when compared to the same period a year earlier (see US search advertising showing signs of first quarter decline).