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Study: Retailers'
Search Engines Drive Online Purchases Marketers
who sell to consumers online would be well-advised to purchase
premium placement in retailers' on-site search engines, at
least going by information in a new report issued Tuesday
by DoubleClick. The study, DoubleClick's latest quarterly
e-commerce trend report, found that 2.1 percent of consumers
who visited a retail site's search engine made a purchase
in the third quarter of this year--up from 1.5 percent in
the third quarter of last year.
In total, 9.3 percent of e-commerce sales came from the search
function on shopping sites, compared to 6.6 percent a year
earlier. Of those who bought products through on-site search
in the third quarter, the average order size per online buyer
grew to $126 from $100 in the same period last year.
Source:MediaPost
And to end the week on Friday, UBS
downgraded shares of Google on reasons that
the search engine company could see reduced growth and profit
margin degradation in 2004. The brokerage set a price target
of $160, a stark departure from other Wall Street research
houses who have touted the shares at $200. Since Thursday,
Google's stock took a real beating in the markets. "We
consider Google a great company but believe investors will
see better entry points in the future," UBS wrote.
The brokerage predicted the company will see slower growth,
margin deterioration in 2005, and a lower valuation as investors
switch their focus from earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation
and amortization to free cash flow. It also noted that the
float of shares available for trading is going to grow by
233% before the end of the year. While conservative relative
to other analysts, the UBS model implies a multiple of 60
times 2006 free cash flow, hardly a stingy estimate.
Testing Your Website For Search Engine Robot Accessibility
TIP! To get an idea just what the
search engine robot "sees" on your page, you can
look at the Sim Spider tool. You may be surprised at how different
your site looks to the robot.
You can find this tool at: http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
To learn more about how search engines work go here
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