YOU CAN ENTERTAIN yourself by scanning over the referrer strings that drive people your way but it's more instructive to know the greatest source of your referrers--the upstream audience. If you want to make money while blogging, you can take a page out of Hitwise since those analysts know what pays. With that perspective in mind, guess the top sources for online retail sales.
According to Hitwise, MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites last week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. If anything, this result documents that youth-oriented online social networking is a market driver of serious proportions. The Hitwise report puts Yahoo! as the source of 4.69 percent of traffic to online retail sites, MySpace as 2.53 percent and MSN search at 2.33 percent for the week ending August 26th. Google leads the pack at 14.93 percent.
If my job was to increase the uptake of science and technology college courses, I would open a presence on MySpace that attracted every Irish teenager under the age of 18. I'd figure out how to hook the brand loyalties of Myspace to Google with Apple. Every teenager knows those names.
Marshall Kirkpatrick -- "MySpace Driving More Online Retail than MSN Search"
