Traffic spat disturbs group buying market

Renai LeMay
Monday, 30 May 2011 09:34

IT Industry - Market

A war of words has erupted in Australia's fast-growing group buying market, after new entrant Groupon claimed it had already secured the lion's share of local web traffic in the category, despite having only launched in mid-February this year.

In a statement issued on Friday, Groupon, which trades as Stardeals in Australia due to its trademark and domain name being held by rival Scoopon, claimed it was already out in front as Hitwise data showed it had secured 23 percent of web traffic in the group buying category '” with the second and third place players picking up 14.4 and 10 percent respectively.

'We are extremely happy with the latest Hitwise data that shows we are the most popular group buying website in Australia,' said Groupon Australia managing director Patrick Schmidt. 'Since launching our first deals in February this year, the team at Stardeals has been working hard to deliver great deals that provide a tangible business outcome for merchants and delight consumers at the same time.'
'The Hitwise data would appear to validate that in only a short time we've managed to capture a good deal of attention from Australian consumers. We put this great result down to our strategy of focusing on providing the best deals, backed up by the industry's best merchant and customer support.'

But Billy Tucker, the chief executive of rival site Cudo, a joint venture between Microsoft and ninemsn, appeared to take issue with the Hitwise statistics.

In a post on his personal blog last week, Tucker wrote that Hitwise was 'the worst of the bunch' when it came to collecting data about web traffic, as the company didn't track individuals visiting sites, instead tracking web traffic as a whole through traffic that flows through Australian internet service providers.