As we reported on Friday, eBay's unique audience in October was down 9.7% compared to October 2007, according to Nielsen Online data, and page views were down 32.6% year-over-year. Nielsen Online has provided AuctionBytes with data for Amazon.com, so it's now possible to compare October year-over-year changes between online retail sites.

Amazon's page views were down by 1.1% in October year-over year, compared to eBay's decline of 32.6%.

And Amazon's Unique Audience numbers were up by 7.85%, compared to eBay's decline of 9.7%, year-over-year.

Looking at the charts, one can see that aside from the month of December 2007, eBay's unique audience numbers exceeded Amazon.com's throughout the year, but the numbers look to be converging in October 2008 - something to watch carefully in the coming months.

It's also interesting to note that eBay's page views peaked in November last year, while Amazon's page views peaked in December. This could be in part due to consumer confidence in getting shipments on time from Amazon.com than from eBay merchants. However, both Amazon and eBay peaked in December in terms of unique visitors, so it's difficult to draw definitive conclusions, since neither company provides sales figures broken down by month.

As we noted in the accompanying article in today's Newsflash newsletter, eBay's average time spent on the site and the number of pages per visitor were down in October year-over year to a greater extent than Amazon's. eBay has made major changes to its search algorithm and "finding" experience over the past year, which may be impacting these metrics. Some could argue that it is a positive trend in that visitors are finding what they are looking for with less searching. Others could argue it's a trend away from serendipitous shopping for unique items and bargains toward a commodity-driven shopping experience - and whether that is a positive development or not depends on your point of view!