eBay traffic declined in April and May 2009 both consecutively and year-over-year, according to data provided by Nielsen. eBay page views fell 6.8% in April 2009 compared to the previous month, and dropped another 7.9% in May 2009. eBay page views for May 2009 were down 32% from a year ago and were down 40% from four years ago in May 2005.

eBay's unique visitor metric is also down, though not as dramatically as page views. In March, eBay had 54.237 million unique visitors; in April, 51.277 million; and in May, 51.606 million. May's number was down 7% compared to one year earlier, and was down 14% from May 2007 (60.163 million).

While eBay gets much greater page views than Amazon.com, it also fluctuates more, with Amazon.com's page views looking remarkably stable when plotted alongside eBay data going back to the fall of 2007.

As AuctionBytes noted in April, eBay and Amazon.com have been in close competition for most unique website visitors. After falling below Amazon.com in number of unique website visitors for three straight months in November, December and January, eBay caught up in February 2009, slightly exceeding its rival. The two marketplaces were neck-and-neck in March, with Amazon leading by a small margin, and in April and May, eBay led again.

The time spent on site per person metric for eBay shows a general downward trend from a peak of 2 hours and 12 minutes in October 2007, with a spike in the first quarter 2009 but falling again in May.

Again there's much less fluctuation in Amazon's traffic - time per person spent on site shows a remarkable consistency.

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