Content is King?

According to Hitwise it is. Analyst Robin Goad has looked at UK site traffic of “transactional” vs “content driven” websites.

Three years ago transactional sites, so online retailers and their ilk, led content driven ones by 5%.

Now the gap is 73%…in the other direction with content sites steadily increasing their overall market share and online retailers on the way down (note in share, not in overall transactions). Yes the recession had an effect, but the trend pre-dates the current economic downturn.

The definition of content websites? A catch all title to include online news, entertainment sites (including online video) and social media.

Robin says that the above chart shows that people are spending more time online, but that doesn’t mean they are shelling out more of their hard earned pounds and dollars.

Indeed, it’s a good snap-shot as to how the Web has changed over the past few years, to become a giant information exchange.