EBay leads the pack for shopping searches

EBay was the top search term in the Shopping and Classifieds section in September

Online auction firm eBay topped the list of shopping sites searched for by UK users in September, new figures show. 

Statistics released by web monitoring firm Hitwise reveal that eBay was the top search term in the Shopping and Classifieds section in the past four weeks, amounting to 2.28 per cent of all search terms delivering users to websites. 

Catalogue retailer Argos was second with 1.04 per cent of search terms, just slightly beating Amazon which accounted for 1.03 per cent. 

Tesco and eBay UK took fourth and fifth places, with 0.58 per cent and 0.49 per cent respectively. Currys, Comet, PC World and John Lewis were the next most popular.

The announcement last month that Google is to offer free downloads of out-of-print books from Google Book Search saw it jump 446 positions to number 362 in the list of most visited shopping sites. 

Hitwise suggested that, rather than disadvantage publishers, Google Book Search may well be facilitating the sale of books.

Amazon UK was the second downstream website from Google Book Search for the week ending 16 September with 7.85 per cent of downstream visits from Google Book Search UK going to websites in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds - Books category.