Survey of top 500 ecommerce sites: fastest-growing sites are smaller niche sites

[mandy]

Internet Retailer's IR 500 survey of the top 500 ecommerce sites:

Today many smaller retailers are growing because they are doing a better job of implementing both paid and natural search. Online shoppers also are using Google, Yahoo and other search engines to find and place orders on a growing number of web sites. And evidence suggests that smaller retailers have a better command of search marketing than their bigger colleagues, which may account in part for their faster growth, experts say.

Based on data supplied for each Top 500 retailer from Hitwise, now part of Experian, 40% of merchants ranked 400 to 500 depend on search engines to generate 50% or more of total site traffic. In contrast, only one Top 100 retailer, Northern Tool + Equipment Catalog Co. (No. 76) generates as much as 38% of site traffic from search engines, while most depend on search engines for 11% to 30% of monthly visits. “If virtual merchants are getting 50% of their traffic from Google and other engines and still growing at a combined rate of more than 20% per year, that tells me that the smaller niche players are doing a good job with pay-per-click and optimization to hold their own against the big players,”...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=22579