As part of its Consumer Insights webinar last week, marketing services firm Experian revealed search engines were responsible for driving more than 40 percent of upstream traffic to Hitwise 500 Retailer websites during the 2013 holiday season.
While still representing the largest share, Experian reported search engines experienced a 13 percent drop in the amount of upstream traffic sent to retailers when comparing traffic data from the 2012 holiday season.
According to Experian, the footwear brand “Uggs” ranked No. 1 for top branded product search terms during the four weeks leading up to December 28. XBox One held the top spot for a brief period during Thanksgiving week and on Black Friday, but Uggs claimed its lead by Cyber Monday and stayed No. 1 during the following four weeks.
Experian also ranked branded searches based on term-variations, i.e. different spellings for each of the branded search terms. When measuring term variations, “iPad” took the lead Thanksgiving week and held it throughout the holiday season.
Interestingly, while 2013 proved to be the biggest holiday shopping season on record, consumers were not as interested in coupons this year. According to Experian’s data, searches for retailer-specific coupons dropped during the 2013 holiday season when compared to the same days in 2012.
Experian’s report also measured the Hitwise 500 social traffic sources during the holidays, which is covered on our partner site at Marketing Land: Facebook and YouTube: Top Social Traffic Sources for E-commerce in December.
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