Google's blog search engine takes over top slot

By Ben Charny, MarketWatch

Last Update: 4:57 PM ET Dec 28, 2006

Beginning in October, Google began shining a spotlight on Google Blog Search with a link to the feature from its main page, Hitwise research director LeeAnne Prescott said.

It worked. "Google knows the power of its main Web site" to steer its vast audience to one of its features, she added.

Google Blog Search's market share jumped to the market-leading 25% recorded last week, Hitwise data show, and in so doing, Google supplanted the leading search engine for blogs, Technorati.

Perhaps more important to Google is how a third of its blog search visitors are part of the highly sought-after demographic of 18- to 24-year-olds. In contrast, Technorati has been doing very well with those 45 and up.

Holiday E-Commerce Sales Surpass $23B - 12/29/2006
Media Post - by Mark Walsh, Friday, Dec 29, 2006 6:00 AM ET

ONLINE HOLIDAY SPENDING IN 2006 increased 26% over last year to $23.11 billion for the nearly two-month period ending Dec. 26, according to data released Thursday by comScore Networks. A late surge of Internet shopping in the week before Christmas--a 38% jump over the year-earlier period--helped push the total to new levels.

'That online retail consumer spending for the year-to-date has surpassed the $100 billion mark is a testament to the continued growth and strength of the online marketplace,' said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks, in a prepared statement. He added that retail e-commerce now accounts for 7% of U.S. consumer retail spending, excluding gas, autos and food.

Amazon led all retailers in online holiday sales, followed by Dell.com, Yahoo.com, Walmart.com and Ticketmaster.com. BestBuy.com, Walmart.com and Ticketmaster.com posted the biggest gains over last year, with each site increasing sales by more than 50%.

E-commerce sales growth was fueled mainly by buying in big-ticket and popular gift categories including jewelry and watches (up 67%), video games (64%) video game consoles (63%), event tickets (55%), and consumer electronics (39%).

The 26% increase in 2006 online holiday sales is just slightly more than the 24% gain in e-commerce activity during the rest of the year. Web retail sales from January to October increased from $62.6 billion to $77.5 billion, according to comScore."

US Online Retail Breaks a Record...Again
An all-time record for online sales in one day was set on November 27 when US online sales totaled $608 million. That record has already been broken.




Though this total is impressive, the record has already been broken.

According to comScore Networks, a mere one week later, on Monday, December 4, a new record for spending in a single day was established, as consumers opened their wallets online to the tune of $647 million. This was 26% higher than the total on the corresponding day of last year and it is $39 million more than the total spent on Cyber Monday."

eMarketer.com - Online Ad Spending to Outpace Overall Ad Market Growth

DECEMBER 8, 2006

Internet advertising continues to gain on other ad categories.


ZenithOptimedia forecasts that global Internet advertising spending will grow by 28.2% in 2007, at the same time ad spending in other media will grow by only 3.9% — in other words, online ad spending will grow seven times faster.


This disparity speaks volumes about the ongoing seismic shift in the world of advertising. However, the shift to the Internet among US marketers is even more dramatic. eMarketer's latest ad spending projections were released on Wednesday (see Internet Advertising Will Weather a Sluggish Economy). These put growth in US online ad spending at 18.9% in 2007, within an entire advertising industry set to grow by only 1.4%."