HITWISE UK RETAIL UPDATE

Shopping Search Heats Up with eBay Acquisition of Shopping.com

London, 2^nd June 2005

Hitwise Analysis of the Shopping Search market in the UK:

• Kelkoo.co.uk dominates the shopping search market in the UK, with 43.79% share of visits to shopping search websites (based on a Hitwise custom category).
• Kelkoo.co.uk receives almost 4 times more visits than the next largest shopping search site, Dealtime.co.uk, which is operated by Shopping.com.
• uk.shopping.com receives more than 1 in 10 visits to shopping search websites.
• The average year-on-year growth among the top 10 shopping search sites was 12% comparing May 2004 to May 2005, underscoring the growing importance of shopping search to UK consumers.
• www.shopping.com has maintained a steady presence over the year, while uk.shopping.com has grown explosively since its launch in August of last year.
• A recent IMRG report showing that online sales grew 30% in April whilst all retail sales fell by 1.3% is good news for shopping search engines such as Shopping.com.

eBay acquisition of Shopping.com gives eBay access to large retailers:

• The acquisition of Shopping.com gives eBay access to large retailers who are aggressively building an online presence.
• Top search terms sending traffic to uk.shopping.com are large UK brands, such as Comet, B&Q, Jessops, Woolworths and Homebase. By contrast, the top terms sending visits to eBay are related to their own brand.  

Most popular Shopping Search Sites in the UKby share of visits, May 2005 (based on a custom category of the top 10 sites)

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.co.uk

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