Search engines generate 10 times more visits than social media for e-commerce sites

The traffic driven by search engines to e-commerce sites is still the dominant traffic in terms of visits made from a computer. The traffic brought in by search engines is reportedly even 10 times higher than that generated by social media!

This data comes from a study by SimilarWeb, a recognized expert company in traffic analysis. It focuses on analyzing desktop traffic sources for e-commerce sites. To do so, SimilarWeb studied some 3.8 billion user data points from 200 countries in January 2016.

Search engines are the largest traffic generator for e-commerce sites

According to the SimilarWeb study, online store traffic comes primarily from search engines, at around 39% of total traffic. Search engines also account for nearly 10 times more traffic than that brought in by social media, which represents only 3.91% of total traffic! This contradicts the many studies that stress the importance of social media as a traffic provider for e-commerce sites.

Behind search engines, the podium of the main traffic sources for e-commerce sites includes:

• direct traffic (represented by direct searches on the e-commerce site without going through search engines), at 35.88% of traffic.

• Referral sites (made up of the sites that link to the store and redirect traffic to it), at 19.34% of traffic.

Organic search largely dominates the traffic brought in by search engines.

Within the traffic brought in by search engines to e-commerce sites, the study confirms the very clear dominance of organic traffic, which represents 94.95% of search engine results, compared with 5.05% for sponsored links.

The brand or company name is still just as important

The study also shows the importance of the brand as a keyword. It is indeed a major generator of traffic for e-commerce sites. The brand drives organic traffic as well as traffic from sponsored links.

For example, the keyword “Fnac” as an organic result attracts some 9,156,000 visitors, which places this keyword fifth in terms of organic visits, again in the “electronic devices” category. The keyword “Fnac” attracts nearly two million visits and ranks as the 3rd most important traffic source on its side for sponsored links in the “electronic devices” category.

The share of PPC traffic is larger in France than internationally

Surprisingly, France ranks third among the countries where sponsored links proportionally bring the most traffic to e-commerce sites. France indeed attracts 3.04% of its online store visitors via sponsored links, compared with a general average of 1.94% for the countries studied, and only 1.84% for the United States!

One caveat should be added to this study: while the traffic studied highlights the importance of search engines for e-commerce sites, no indication is given about the possible conversions brought in by each of the channels.

You can download the [full SimilarWeb study here](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/106-3_Search-Marketing-Benchmark-Report.pdf?utm_source=default&utm_medium=mem_default&utm_campaign=Search Marketing Benchmark Report&utm_content=button).