Ecommerce Trends

TL;DR

• Traffic per store fell 29.1% in October, to 119,846 visits, and is 22.9% below October 2025. Compare each client's channel and landing-page data before proposing changes.
• Google organic traffic fell 26.2% month over month and 31.9% year over year. Split impressions from clicks in Search Console on priority pages.
• Estimated Meta spend rose 36.1% and estimated Meta traffic rose 28.7% month over month. Reconcile platform reporting with site analytics on one campaign first.
• Referring domains per store fell 15.4%, to 504. Audit recently lost domains and the pages they linked to.

October traffic per store dropped sharply: 119,846 visits, down 29.1% from September and 22.9% from October 2025. Google organic visits fell even faster over the year, 31.9%. Paid social moved the other way, with estimated Meta spend up 36.1% and estimated Meta traffic up 28.7%, and both Instagram and TikTok referrals rose. For agencies, the spread between falling organic channels and rising paid social is the main thing to explain in client reviews this month.

Outside the store averages, Great Britain's Office for National Statistics reported that online sales were 28.8% of all retail sales in September 2026, with online values 6.8% higher than in September 2025 (ONS retail sales bulletin). That figure describes retail in Great Britain as a whole, and it frames this month's lower per-store averages against steady online demand.

About this data

This report covers 90,429 stores and uses October 2026, the latest complete month; November is still in progress, so its partial figures are excluded. Every figure is an average per store for the month. Market-wide figures and per-store averages measure different things. October comparisons for Google Ads spend and paid Google traffic are omitted because the store counts behind October and September differ too widely to compare; where September is comparable with September 2025, that comparison is noted in the paid media section.

The numbers at a glance

October 2026 against September 2026 and October 2025, for the metrics with data this month:

Traffic trends

Traffic per store fell 29.1% in October, to 119,846 visits, and sits 22.9% below October 2025. The monthly and yearly comparisons point the same way, so treat them as one story rather than two.

Traffic fell month over month in all eight tracked retail categories this month. The steepest drop was 52.5% in the automotive ecommerce trends report, while beauty ecommerce trends was the only category up year over year, at 2.0%.

Contentsquare's retail benchmark found that traffic to retail websites fell 2.6% in 2025 and conversions fell 5.5%, with 77% of retail traffic coming from mobile devices (Contentsquare retail guide). Those figures describe retail websites as a whole, across ecommerce in general. Next to this month's decline, they make the mobile path from ad or search result to product page worth checking.

For a client review, compare October with September and October 2025 in the client's analytics, broken down by channel, landing page, and device. A decline concentrated on a few high-value pages calls for a different investigation than a broad drop across channels. If you sell traffic audits, bring the three-period comparison and one page-level finding to the next call.

SEO performance

Google organic traffic per store fell 26.2% in October from September, to 73,759 visits, and is down 31.9% from October 2025. The yearly drop is the bigger warning sign for planning.

Organic search fell year over year in all eight tracked categories, steepest in the automotive report at 43.2% and shallowest in beauty ecommerce trends at 2.5%. For a high-consideration category, jewelry ecommerce trends shows organic traffic down 15.5% year over year.

Ahrefs studied 300,000 keywords and found that "the presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page." (Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing, Ahrefs, study update). Pew Research Center found that users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, versus 15% without one (Pew Research Center). Those findings make zero-click behavior a practical thing to check, not just a headline.

In Search Console, compare impressions, clicks, and average position for the same two periods, split branded from non-branded queries, and record whether priority queries show an AI Overview and whether the client appears in it. If impressions held but clicks fell, the issue sits in titles and snippets; if both fell, look at which pages lost visibility. Bring that split to the next client call.

Paid media trends

Estimated Meta spend per store rose 36.1% in October, to 3,213, and estimated Meta traffic rose 28.7%, to 4,081, both across 26,626 stores. October Google Ads figures cover only 6,663 stores for spend (1,957 per store) and 7,165 for paid traffic (2,823 per store), so no October month-over-month comparison is made here. September's Google Ads spend of 7,715 per store was 11.0% above September 2025, and September paid Google traffic was 7.9% above a year earlier; both are comparable periods.

Meta's Q3 2026 results, filed with the SEC, reported that average price per ad rose 14% year over year while ad impressions rose 10% (Meta Q3 2026 release). Tinuiti's Q1 2026 benchmark of its advertisers found Google search ad spend up 14% year over year and Performance Max holding 67% of Google Shopping spend, up from 53% a year earlier (Tinuiti benchmark). Rising platform prices plus automation-heavy formats make incrementality the useful question in client accounts.

Estimated Meta spend rose in all eight tracked categories in October; the fastest rise was 44.2% in the CPG ecommerce trends report. For one client campaign, reconcile platform-reported spend and clicks with the site's own analytics over the same dates, note which system each number comes from, and only then discuss budget. Check that conversion events and attribution windows match across the period before comparing.

Social media trends

Instagram traffic per store rose 2.1% in October, to 596, across 61,027 stores. TikTok traffic rose 11.5%, to 360, across 16,144 stores. Both platforms rose while total traffic per store fell 29.1% this month, so social referrals are a small but growing slice of a smaller total.

TikTok Shop's US GMV reached an estimated $11.8 billion in the first half of 2026, up 103% year over year, and US stores on the platform nearly tripled to 1.35 million (KrASIA). eMarketer, reported by Retail Dive, projects US social commerce sales to exceed $100 billion in 2026 after surpassing $87 billion in 2025 (Retail Dive). Those are market-level figures for ecommerce in general. Against them, this month's per-store referral averages are small, so the practical check is tracking quality: confirm campaign labels separate paid from organic social, and test that links on current posts resolve to the featured product on mobile. Compare referral visits with the client's own engagement reporting before planning the next post. The pet ecommerce trends report also saw Instagram traffic rise, 2.0%.

Link profile

Average referring domains per store fell 15.4% in October, to 504, from 595 in September.

The decline was mid-range across categories: the food and beverage ecommerce trends report saw the smallest fall, 12.3%, while fashion ecommerce trends saw the largest, 23.5%.

Ahrefs' analysis of 75,000 brands found that brand web mentions correlate with AI Overview brand visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks (Ahrefs study). In a survey of 518 SEO professionals, 48.6% named digital PR the most effective link-building tactic for 2026 (Editorial.Link survey). For a client, export the referring domains that disappeared in the last two months, check whether the linking pages are still live and relevant, and confirm the linked destinations still work. Note whether the lost linking pages were retired or merely redirected, since those are the losses worth reclaiming, and show the domain trend beside the specific pages that lost links. Keep repair separate from new outreach in the report to the client.

Where advertising budgets are concentrating

The IAB and PwC reported that US internet advertising revenue reached $294.6 billion in 2025, up 13.9%, with social at $117.7 billion (up 32.6%), search at $114.2 billion (up 11%), and commerce media at $63.4 billion (up 18%); creator advertising reached $37 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $44 billion in 2026 (IAB revenue report). "This revenue growth reflects a market that has reoriented around performance channels," said David Cohen, CEO of IAB. The National Retail Federation forecasts that US November and December 2026 retail sales will grow 4.2% to $1.013 trillion (NRF holiday forecast).

Set against those market-wide figures, this report's per-store averages moved down in October for traffic and organic search while paid social estimates rose. Platform pricing moved up at the same time: Meta reported that its average price per ad rose 14% year over year in Q3 2026, a platform-level pricing fact.

For agencies, the useful offer is incrementality: help a client test whether paid social adds orders beyond what search and organic already deliver, and document the result. With the holiday window close, the NRF's 4.2% forecast for November and December makes a clean, well-tracked Q4 plan more valuable than a broad spend increase. Browse the reports hub for category comparisons such as fashion ecommerce trends when a client sits in a specific vertical.

What to do next

Over the next 30 days, work in this order: first the traffic and SEO comparisons, then paid reconciliation, then social and link checks.