As radio stations develop their online strategies, many are considering the value of paying for prominence on search engines. Online statistics monitoring company Hitwise Australia recently conducted a study on the paid and organic traffic of
leading websites in major online commerce industries, finding an increase in traffic for those who pay.

The Hitwise Search Intelligence™ 4.0 tool breaks website search traffic into its paid and
organic components to the keyword level, allowing marketers to gauge
their competitors’ Search Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) strategies.

Findings from the study show that while Australian marketers in the
Travel – Destinations and Accommodation space lead against other online
industries in terms of paid search, the average paid traffic volume for
the top 10 websites in this industry lags the UK travel industry by a
margin of over 27%.

Paid traffic accounts for 15.8% of visits to the top
10 Australian Travel – Destinations & Accommodation websites, week ending
7 October 2006. This compares to 43.5% for UK Destinations &
Accommodation websites as visited by UK Internet users, indicating a much
more competitive SEM space.

Paid traffic volumes measured were similar across a number of Australian
online commerce industries, including Employment 14.3%, Property 11.5%
and Shopping & Classifieds 13.8%, for the 4 weeks ending 7 October 2006.

In this study, Hitwise also observed that websites that have increased
their market share substantially in the previous year have aggressive
paid search strategies. Australian examples include DealsDirect.com.au,
which is the leading Australian website in the Department Stores industry
and has increased its market share by 309.8% year ending 7 October 2006.
Homehound.com in online Property has increased its market share by 88%
year ending 7 October 2006.

The hitwise site link is below.