Tough economy affecting Google search traffic?

[jdurand26]

Wondering if the bad economic conditions are reducing traffic to your website? Are retail/e-commerce websites being hit especially hard? Just wanted to understand what other people are seeing...

[rainborick]

There's no doubt about it. People are scaling back their shopping, so they're not searching as often for goods and services or clicking on ads. It's hard to quantify because there's always a surge during the Christmas holidays and the web is still growing, but the trends are certainly there.

[ken_b]

Wouldn't people be more likely to search more while trying to find a better deal?

[Quadrille]

That's my feeling, too.

So Adsense users in some areas may be getting more clicks - but if there's fewer advertsiers, that may not translate into more income.

I've been hearing tales of people doing better selling on ebay - but, again, with holidays coming, it's hard to draw firm conclusions.

[signor_john]

Are retail/e-commerce websites being hit especially hard?

Today, Hitwise reported on a comparison between traffic on 47 airline Web sites last week and during the same week in 2007. Overall traffic was down about 11 percent: 14 percent for discount carriers and 7 percent for major carriers, with one airline--Southwest--bucking the trend by being up by 7 percent.

[cabowabo]

Our organic traffic is about the same, AdWords traffic is down, clicks for AdSense is up ... but revenues for AdSense are about the same which is weird.

[Web_speed]

clicks for AdSense is up ... but revenues for AdSense are about the same which is weird.

Must be the "No cap" thing ;)

[edited by: Web_speed at 1:01 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2008]