Walmart and Sears Get the Likes

The “likes” have it: Walmart and Sears were the most popular store sites on Facebook during the 2014 holiday season.

According to a study by Searchmetrics of nine top U.S. department stores and three mass merchant stores sites linking to the social media juggernaut, Sears was the most popular department store, while Walmart.com was the most popular mass merchant store.

During the period analyzed, Walmart tallied 40,312,744 Facebook links – indicated in the form of likes, comments and shares – per week for its Web pages, placing it well in front of Target (which posted 16,505,929 links per week) and Costco (which put up 5,324,495 links per week). Sears topped the list of department stores with 12,032,546 Facebook links for its Web pages per week, followed by Kohl’s with 5,209,287 Facebook links per week.

Commented Marcus Tober, CTO and founder of Searchmetrics: “It makes sense retailers are trying to generate social activity and mentions on Facebook as growing evidence shows that consumers are using social media as a key discovery tool for finding information online. And of course it is a powerful recommendation if consumers see likes, shares and positive comments about a retailer or its products from their own Facebook friends.”

A recent Forrester study of nearly 5,000 U.S. consumers revealed that Facebook came second only to Google as a source for finding information – ahead of TV ads and TV shows – indicating Facebook’s growing power in the arena.