The news is buzzing, starting with a report from UBS that alleges that Google's paid clicks are down in January. Analysts from a number of firms have been speculating that this may be a sign that a slowing economy is affecting search. Not so fast. If a recession is in fact affecting search, we should see a drop in the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites (our Shopping & Classifieds category). The following chart shows the percentage of traffic over the last three years actually increasing.

As you can see, Google traffic to retail, on a monthly basis, is on the increase compared to previous years. If we focus in on daily data (year-over-year comparison) we see that Google traffic to retail is also up on a daily basis when we compare January/February 2007 with 2008.

Bill Tancer

This post originally appeared on Bill Tancer's blog here. Bill is the General Manager, Global Research at Hitwise. His bio can be viewed here.

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