In case you are still skeptical whether social networking sites are really catching on or not, check out the top search terms from the month ending 11/28/09, provided by Experian Hitwise. Note that these are the top terms from All Categories, including the Shopping and Classified category during the holiday shopping rush during Thanksgiving week.  Seven of the top 10 are social networking sites. That’s amazing. Only two are classified ads sites, and one is a search engine. Craigslist, which ranked number 4 in the Overall Search Terms, was the top search in the Shopping and Classifieds category. This tells us social networking sites were searched more than retailers in the last month.

What does it mean?

1. Social networking is hot: Even when shoppers in the US are going hog-wild looking for “Black Friday” shopping deals on the internet, social networking site searches still outranked searches for “black Friday,” “Amazon,” and the ubiquitous “Wal-Mart.”

2. Is there a place for your products on eBay? It would appear the internet savvy shopper is doing their business on-line with craigslist and eBay.

3. Your business better be using social networking: If you’re not on Facebook or MySpace, you might be missing opportunities to market.

It will be interesting to see how this season’s searches change by the end of December, especially in light of “Black Monday,” when American shoppers took to the internet following Thanksgiving week. We’ll keep you informed.

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Thanks to Experian Hitwise for permission to reprint their statistics.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009, 8:01 am   |   Facebook, Social Marketing, Social Media, Walmart  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback