Google checkout visits up 30% says Hitwise

LeeAnn at Hitwise is reporting that Google Checkout visits are up 30% for the past four weeks.

A clipping from her post:

Its market share of visits was up 30% in the past four weeks (week ending 11/18/06 vs. week ending 10/21/06), and soon it should rank in the top 20 Google properties (See Bill's post from yesterday).

Paypal could be considered the nearest competitor to Google Checkout, but Paypal is still dependent on eBay for the majority of its traffic: for the week ending 11/18/06, 70% of Paypal's upstream traffic came directly from eBay.

Google Checkout is partnering with a wide variety of merchants, as you can see below in its list of upstream websites from the Shopping & Classifieds category for last week.

I do find it interesting that 70% of Paypal comes from eBay, considering that basically everyone I know uses Paypal to tender their service work. 

My take is that until Google Checkout allows services to be purchased, it will be difficult to overtake Paypal. Once that happens, all bets are off. I think there is still a lot of hatred towards Paypal and there is a positive vibe with Google, so many freelancers and publishers may switch quickly to GC.

Buy.com is currently the largest merchant using Google Checkout and from Hitwise, 19% of upstream traffic from Buy.com goes to GC, at a basic level that means that 20% of purchases on Buy.com are using Google Checkout.

What would be awesome to find out is how many of those purchases are incremental, that is the customer purchased because of the current $10 off $30 and $20 off $50 coupons floating around. (btw, those coupons are still available, just go to buy.com)