'A place for friends'

The top US paid search term in August 2008 was "ebay," and the top organic search term was "myspace," according to (pdf) research from Hitwise. Among all websites, "ebay" received 0.12 percent of paid clicks and "myspace" got 3.1 percent of organic clicks, MarketingCharts writes.

In paid search, "ebay" drove the most traffic from paid listings and had six times the traffic of the next biggest paid search term, "ebay.com." That indicates both the high volume of searches conducted on the term "ebay" and the propensity of eBay customers to click on sponsored listings, according to Hitwise.

"The eBay website is capturing more than 88 percent of the online traffic generated by paid listings on the variations of the term "ebay," said Anita Gandhi, director of client intelligence at Hitwise. "This illustrates a keen understanding of the value of buying brand terms."

In terms of categories that are receiving the most overall clicks, office supplies received 43.2 percent of all paid search traffic for the four weeks ended August 30, 2008 - that's an 8 percent increase over July 2008 and the highest percentage of paid search traffic among the 170+ categories Hitwise tracks. The category increase in paid traffic is likely because of back-to-school promotions during August, Hitwise said.

Other top categories receiving high percentages of paid traffic included travel agency sites, telecommunications, legal and pharmaceutical websites. The telecommunications category received an 8 percent increase in August (up from July), while pharmaceutical and medical products increased 2 percent.