By: Ina Steiner
Sat Nov 11 2006 011:52:52

As always, eBay sellers amaze me with their analytical thinking. People are buzzing about Lissa McGrath's article on international traffic to eBay.com. According to ComScore, 70 percent of unique visitors to eBay.com come from outside the U.S., and the same percentage of page views come from outside the U.S.

Beyond the Treeline, Inc. wrote in asking if the data was looking at eBay properties worldwide, or U.S. only. I added the word U.S. to the article and added a note to clarify that the comScore Networks study looked at U.S. Web properties. (Thanks for helping us make that clearer.) Beyond the Treeline had some interesting questions:

Are they defining "eBay" as:
(1) "eBay.com", or
(2) "eBay.com" + all affiliated domains (Matchups, etc.) + all affiliated subdomains (Express, etc.), or
(3) "eBay.com" + all affiliated domains (Matchups, etc.) + all affiliated subdomains (Express, etc.) + eBay.ca, eBay.fr, eBay.de, eBay.co.uk, eBay.com.au, eBay.sg, eBay.cn, eBay.in, eBay.be, eBay.nl, eBay.ch, eBay.ph (THE LIST CONTINUES, see eBay.com homepage (bottom) for the whole list).

If (1), then that's a shocker that international traffic is so high. If (2), it's less of a shocker. If (3), then its not a surprise at all.

It seems clear in looking at the ComScore press release that it does not define eBay as number 3. Lissa has sent an inquiry to ComScore for further clarification. (I'll add them to the article if they add any clarity.) Here are my thoughts, maybe readers have other thoughts as well.

I imagine that blogs, wikis, matchups are part of eBay.com - if you look at their URLs, like this one:
http://blogs.ebay.com/

So blogs reside on eBay.com. I'm not sure that it matters - a) traffic going to these properties are designed to then lure people to eBay.com, and it seems relevant that international traffic is finding its way there, and b) I have to believe traffic to those eBay features is really a very small percentage of traffic going to listings and Stores. In some ways, I don't see why it would matter if eBay Express was included or not in the findings.

The point ComScore is making is that there's lots of international traffic to U.S. properties, and Lissa suggests this may be an opportunity for eBay.com sellers. The risks of selling overseas is greater, of course, which is a whole other topic!

PS: Check out Beyond the Treeline's blog, it's interesting!