Hitwise Intelligence - Analyst Weblogs

What gadgets are early adopters searching for?

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:44:12 +1100

Later this week I’ll be sharing some insights at the Australian Retail Symposium 2009 on how specific demographic segments search for retail brands and products. I’ve looked at searches by Australian households in our Hitwise Lifestyle segment, ‘Young Ambition’, who are early adopters of technology and are likely to research products over the Internet. Here’s a sample of their leading electronics search terms during March 2009:

• ‘mobile phones’ was the leading product-related search term, but ‘Young Ambition’ were much more likely to search for ‘mobile phone reviews’ with an index of 485 compared to the online population average (100).

• ‘iphone accessories’ attracted higher volumes of search than ‘iphone,’ suggesting that ‘Young Ambition’ are seasoned iPhone users and are now looking for the latest accessories.

• ‘Omnia’ and the ‘LG Web Slider’ are providing strong competition to the iPhone amongst ‘Young Ambition’ households, with high search volumes compared to the online population.

• ‘navman’ and ‘tomtom’ searches were over-represented amongst ‘Young Ambition’ during Christmas 2008 but were under-represented during March 2009. This suggests that navigation products are becoming less of a fad amongst early adopters.

• ‘headphones’, 'cameras' and ‘laptops’ were other leading product search terms. ‘Sennheiser’ related terms also appeared in the long-tail of ‘Young Ambition’ searches.

Retailers can gain an understanding of the products and brands that resound with specific consumer groups by drilling into their search behaviour. Stay tuned for a similar analysis on high-end shoppers and suburban families.

Budget 2009: paid search tactics

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:00:00 +0000

As you would expect, last week’s budget received a lot of press attention. UK Internet searches for the term ‘budget’ increased 27-fold between the weeks ending April 18th and 25th. However, as the chart below illustrates, searches for the term only reached a similar level to last year and were actually down on two years ago. Following the online reaction to last year’s pre-budget report I was also expecting a spike in searches for the term ‘50p tax’, but surprisingly that didn’t occur.

Despite this, ‘budget’ was the third fastest moving term in the in the UK last week (in fact it was really the fastest, as the two that appeared above it – ‘earth day’ and ‘st george’s day’ - were both Google Doodles), and lots of websites were competing to pick up traffic from it. As the table below illustrates, the most successful was DirectGov, which paid for the majority of its clicks. The Telegraph ranked second, also thanks to a significant investment in paid traffic, while BBC News, Google News and the FT all ranked in the top 10. The accountancy firms also did well from the term, with KPMG beating Ernst & Young to the top spot this year, despite paying less for its traffic.

The Conservative Party also ran a paid search campaign for the budget, and was the 11th biggest recipient of traffic from the term ‘budget’ last week. Over 90% of this traffic came via paid search and, as the table below illustrates, it was the highest placed non-branded term sending traffic to the Tories’ homepage last week. The other terms that that Conservative Party received a significant amount of paid traffic from were ‘budget 2009’, ‘vat threshold’ and ‘2009 budget’.

The combination of more paid search traffic and the general interest in all things budget-related meant that traffic to conservatives.com increased by 71% last week. The official homepages of the Labour Party (up 20%) and the Liberal Democrats (up 33%) also received traffic boosts. Following on from the Daniel Hannan YouTube clip last month, it is starting to look like the next UK election may well be the first in which the Internet will play a significant role.

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Oprah may be America’s Tweet-heart, but she doesn’t make the earth move Downunder!

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:22:00 +1100

My colleague in the US, Heather Hopkins recently covered the blaze of publicity around Oprah Winfrey starting to tweet and its immediate impact on Twitter’s US share of visits. In Australia the influences seem to be broader than America’s new 'tweetheart'.

In Australia the growth of Twitter has been nothing short of phenomenal;
• 49.9% growth in the past month (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 22/03/2009)
• 1067.3% since the start of the 2009 (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 01/01/2009)
• 3,220.7% annual growth (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 22/04/2008).

On Sunday 19 April 2009, Twitter became the 37th most visited website by Australian Internet users, breaking into the top 40 Australian websites for the first time on the back of a 3.9% rise in share, coinciding with Oprah’s first tweet.

The largest single day of growth experienced by Twitter this year was 22 March 2009, when share of visits grew by 89.3% over the previous day. It was a day after the Queensland Election and four days after the second of the Melbourne earth tremors.

In Australia a number of celebrities were included in searches for ‘twitter’, representing 38% of the top 50 ‘twitter’ search variations for week ending 18 April 2009.

Ashton Kutcher and his challenge to be the first Twitterer to have one million followers received considerable news coverage. In the days leading up Kutcher passing the million follower mark, Twitter’s share of daily visits increased by 10.6% (16/4/2009) and 6.22% (17/4/2009). Oprah could only move Twitter’s Australian share by 2.46% (18/4/2009).

Lindsay Lohan however, with her much publicised relationship split, had the strongest association with Twitter compared to other celebrities, with 0.65% of Twitter-related search terms (week ending 18/04/2009), followed by Kutcher (0.51%), Miley Cyrus (0.35%) and Australia’s Hugh Jackman (0.22%).

Twitter a truly global phenomenon

In other markets, Twitter has a growth pattern similar to the US and UK, highlighting that Twitter is a truly global phenomenon.

Twitter increased its share in New Zealand 305.5% since the start of the year (1/01/2009), and on 21 April 2009 ranked at 49 amongst all websites (up from 206).

In Singapore, Twitter moved up 239 positions to a rank of 65 amongst all websites with an increase in share of visits of 333.3% since the 1/01/2009.

Hong Kong is lagging by comparison to the other Asia Pacific markets the US and UK, as can be seen from the chart below, but has moved up 373 places since 1/01/2009 to currently stand at the 198th most visited website in Hong Kong on 21/04/2009 with a share of visits increase of 198.1%.

Click chart for larger version

It is interesting to note that large jumps in share of visits have been sparked by a variety of events and news items at different times over the past three months. However, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah seem to have had an impact in all countries in mid April.

For statistical comparison the Twitters share of visits in the US and UK, as at 21/4/2009, have grown 570.03% and 621.3% respectively since 1/01/2009 improving its ranking position by 324 spots in the US and 305 spots in the UK.

It is interesting to note that Entertainment / Celebrity brands have embraced Twitter as a communication and connection tool, yet many consumer facing brands have yet to understand the opportunity and accept the challenge of direct interaction with consumers. Props to those businesses that are active and learning.

Bushfire Searches: 4 week window of peak community interest

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:09:26 +1100

The Victorian bushfires in February 2009 demonstrated how Australians turned to the Internet to get vital information surrounding a crisis. Search data reflected strong community awareness of the Victorian Country Fire Authority, with ‘cfa’ the fastest moving search term driving traffic to all websites in February 2009. Searches that included ‘bushfires’ were three times greater than searches including ‘cfa’ during the height of the crisis, week ending 14 February 2009. The below figure demonstrates the peak of bushfire searches following Black Saturday and how quickly they dropped off.

· ‘Bushfires’ searches decreased by 76.5% the week ending 21 February 2009 compared to week ending 14 February 2009, and dropped a futher 44.3% a fortnight later.

· There was 4-week window for peak community awareness following the Victorian Bushfire tragedy. 6 weeks after the height of the crisis, search activity on ‘bushfires’ dropped to search levels preceding the crisis.

Bushfire Searches became more specific during and after crisis

A detailed study into the bushfire searches provide insight into what types of information requirements emerge at key periods during a crisis. Hitwise found that bushfire searches fell into the following 5 types:

1. ‘Appeal’ searches around fundraising efforts e.g. ‘redcross bushfire appeal’
2. ‘Education’ searches around historical knowledge and future planning e.g. ‘bushfire survival’
3. ‘General’ searches e.g. ‘victorian bushfires’
4. ‘Informational’ searches around news and geographical updates e.g. ‘bushfire map’
5. ‘Services’ searches around government and commercial agencies e.g. ‘cfa bushfires’

· ‘Informational’ searches were strong throughout, with timeliness the key in providing community updates. The top 5 websites to receive ‘Informational’ searches during the height of the crisis (week ending 14 February 2009) were the Victoria Country Fire Authority, ABC News Online, Google News Australia, Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, and The Age.

·The community were willing to provide support immediately with ‘Appeal’ searches prevalent during the week ending 14 February 2009. ‘Appeal’ searches however dropped off significantly 5 weeks after the crisis.

· News and Media websites attracted the most traffic from all types of bushfire searches apart from ‘Services’ following the crisis. However News and Media websites received a smaller allocation of paid traffic on ‘bushfire’ Searches (5.8%) than Government websites (8.7%) during the week ending 14 March 2009, suggesting that organic traffic was a more important driver of traffic.

·The proportion of ‘Education’ searches peaked 5 weeks following the crisis, suggesting ongoing demand for information to avoid a repeat of the disaster. Wikipedia was the top website to receive ‘Educational’ during the crisis (week ending 14 March 2009). While Government websites received a significant portion of search traffic with 8.9%, it is clear agencies need to compete with a range of sources in providing reliable and authoritative information to the public.

Making sure government websites are optimised for searches on key issues

Government agencies can use online behaviour surrounding the Victorian bushfire case study to understand the needs of the community, when information is crucial for saving lives. By investing in best practice Search Engine Optimisation, such as using keyword research to determine the language of the community, government agencies can ensure they are a key source of information. Government agencies can also work with leading online news outlets for information dissemination.

We will be releasing an Online Government report very soon that includes the bushfire case study so stay tuned. Hitwise Research Director, Alan Long and Product Director for Search Marketing Services, Stuart McKeown will also be speaking at this AMI event on 30 April: Best practices for government, community organisations and consumer marketing.

Online retailers receiving less traffic from paid search, but more from social networks

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:00:00 +0000

The amount of traffic that online retailers receive from paid search – i.e. from sponsored or paid for links on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Live and Ask - has fallen over the last 12 months. During March 2009, 8.9% of all UK Internet visits to online retailers came from a paid search listing, down from 10.1% in March 2008.

Search engines are the primary source of traffic for almost all online retailers, and a typical ecommerce site in the UK receives 2 in every 5 visits from a search engine. However, the proportion of search traffic that comes from paid listings fell from 27.8% in March 2008 to 22.5% in March 2009. Retailers are amongst the biggest users of paid search in the UK, so – as the chart below illustrates - this has also contributed to an overall decline in paid search rates. In March 2009, 9.4% of all search engine traffic in the UK was from paid listings, down from 12.1% in March 2008.

Following yesterday’s post illustrating that social networks now receive more UK Internet visits that online retailers, it is perhaps no surprise to see that the amount of traffic our Shopping and Classifies category receive from social networking websites increased from 5.2% in March 2008 to 7.1% in March 2009. A year ago online retailers received a similar amount of traffic from both social networks and webmail services (such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and GoogleMail), but social networks now account for 58.3% more traffic than webmail providers.

The retail categories that received most traffic from social networks during March 2009 were Auctions, Fashion and Department Stores. Together they accounted for over half of all downstream visits from social networks to an online retailer.

Top 10 online retail websites receiving traffic from social networks, March 2009:

1. eBay UK (1.94% of all downstream visits from social networks)
2. Amazon UK (0.40%)
3. Play.com (0.19%)
4. ASOS (0.13%)
5. eBay (0.10%)
6. Argos (0.09%)
7. Gumtree.com (0.09%)
8. Amazon.com (0.08%)
9. TopShop.com (0.08%)
10. HotUKDeals (0.08%)

Social networks are a relatively small but fast growing source of traffic for online retailers. At present, only a minority of retailers pick up a significant amount of traffic from social networks, but many of those that do have seen a positive impact on traffic. For example, fashion retailer ASOS has a strong presence on Facebook and in March received 13.3% of its traffic from the social network. Another example – in a very different market – is online bookseller Abebooks, which currently receives a quarter of all its UK Internet traffic from social networks, more than it gets from search engines. These and other examples illustrate that a retailer’s success on a social network has less to do with products or demographics than it does with effectively engaging with an online community.

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UK Internet users spending more time on social networks than shopping online

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:20:00 +0000

UK Internet users are spending less of their online time shopping and more time browsing online media. During March 2009, 8.6% of all UK Internet visits went to online retail websites and 9.8% to social networking websites. A year ago, in March 2008, the figures were reversed: online retailers accounted for 9.7% of all UK Internet visits, and social networks 8.2%. Over the same time period, the share of UK Internet visits attributed to Entertainment websites (11.4% in March 2008, 11.6% in March 2009) and News and Media websites (5.0% in March 2008, 5.6% in March 2009) has also increased.

The growth of social networking, online video and the continuing popularity of news websites has meant that an increasing proportion of consumer’s online time in the UK has been devoted to online media. Historically this has gone hand in hand with the growth of online retail, but over the last 3 months online retailers seem to be really suffering from the economic downturn for the first time. Traffic to online retailers always peaks over the Christmas period, then declines during January and February, but picks up in March. Last year UK Internet traffic to online retailers increased by 0.8% between February and March, but this year it fell by 0.1%. The decline between December and February was also greater this year.

Electronics retailers and department stores have experienced the most significant declines in traffic since Christmas, although the recent Spring sales acted as a temporary boost for the latter category. However, despite the post-Christmas decline in online retail, there are a number of categories that continue to outperform the general market Online fashion was the fastest growing online retail category during 2009 and continues to perform well, despite growth slowing. Sports retailers are also doing well, helped in part by the demand for the new England football kit.

The good weather over the last few weeks has led to an increase in searches for garden furniture and tools, with a corresponding increase in traffic to House and Garden retailers. Finally, Classifieds websites have seen their UK Internet traffic increase by 15% over the last 12 months as people look to buy and sell second hand goods online.

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Oprah Effect on Twitter

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:50:18 -0500

Oprah Winfrey, the icon that can turn any book or product into a best seller, posted her first Tweet on Friday on her show. There's been much debate among loyal Twitter users about whether this spells the end for Twitter's coolness, as soccer moms sign up in droves.

So what was the Oprah-Effect on Twitter? The following chart shows daily visits to Twitter from 1st January to 18th April (Oprah's first Tweet was on the 17th).

Share of US Internet visits to Twitter increased 24% on Friday, April 17, the day of Oprah's first Tweet. Comparing visits with the previous Friday, visits were up 43%.

Hitwise clickstream data reveals that on April 17, 37% of visits to Twitter.com were new visitors (as opposed to returning). The service typically has a high ratio of new visitors as it is still very much in a growth phase. However, the percentage of new visitors was 5% higher on Friday than the previous day and the average for March. To give a benchmark, Facebook's ratio of new visitors was 8% in March.

The search term "oprah twitter" was the #35 highest search term with the word "twitter" last week and the #7 with "oprah". Considering that our search data is weekly and that the show only aired on Friday, this is impressive.

Interest rates: the relationship between online and offline behaviour

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:45:00 +0000

The Internet is now a key source of info for the majority of people in the UK. Consequently, search engines are one of the first places people turn to for information on everything from celebrity culture to the global financial crisis. Therefore it can be informative to use Hitwise search data as a way of monitoring not only online behaviour, but also the reaction to events in the ‘real’ world.

We often see these correlations between online and offline data in the financial services world. For example, searches for ‘house prices’ broadly follow real house prices: increasing in the boom times, but falling as the credit crunch began to bite. But what about interest rates: how have people responded the massive drops that have taken place over the last six months? The chart below illustrates two data sets: the pink line represents the Bank of England interest rate over the last 3 years; the blue line is the weekly UK search volume for the term ‘interest rates’.

Up until Autumn 2008 - broadly speaking - searches for term ‘interest rates’ increased in line with actual interest rates. There were obviously weekly fluctuations and noticeable peaks during the weeks when interest rates actually changed, but the correlation is there to see.

However, searches for interest rates increased dramatically last Autumn, as the Bank of England’s monthly decreases became more significant. Searches for ‘interest rates’ reached their highest ever level following the 1.5% drop at the start of November 2008 and since then they have peaked each time that the rates have changed. But the height of those peaks has decreased in line with falling interest rates, re-instating the correlation between searches and actual rates.

It is also interesting to see where people go after searching for interest rates - and how this has changed over time. Looking back to the boom times and picking week when the Bank of England increased interest rates (w/e 11/11/06), 40.7% of people searching for ‘interest rates’ went to a website in our Banks and Financial Institutions category, while 29.6% went to a News and Media site. Fast forward to the last downward adjustment – w/e 07/03/09 – and more people (50.9%) went to a News and Media site than visited the Banks and Financial Institutions category (29.6%).

So, the general increase in ‘interest rate’ searches is as much down to curiosity as people making financial decisions. Presumable this is because interest rate changes are now perceived to have a wider economic significance than simply feeding into mortgage rates. Then again, it may be that news websites have realized that the economic crisis is a good story, and have therefore become more effective at picking up traffic from economic search terms. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in between these two explanations.

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Google Maps Surpasses Mapquest in Visits

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:22:33 -0500

Back in February, my colleague Heather Hopkins wrote about the shrinking gap in visits between the two leading online maps, Google Maps and MapQuest. As of the week ending April 11, 2009, Google Maps has now edged past MapQuest with a higher market share of visits. While the share of visits is higher for Google Maps, the average visit time on MapQuest remained higher at 10 minutes and 51 seconds as compared to 7 minutes and 24 seconds on Google Maps. Google is the top referral sources for both websites, but is considerably higher for Google Maps with 61% last week while the share of visits referred to MapQuest was 25%.

The case still remains that MapQuest is a strong brand and is the leading search term driving traffic to the Maps category, but there appears to be some erosion that has taken place over time. The share of traffic from the search term ‘mapquest’ (which represents 32% of the clicks driving traffic to MapQuest) to the Maps category has declined 32% for the 4 weeks ending April 11, 2009 when compared to the same time frame one year ago.

Albeit amidst some controversy following the launch in the UK, the Google Maps feature ‘Street View’ has been very popular and the share of searches on ‘street view’ increased 29% for the 4 weeks ending April 11, 2009 when compared to the same timeframe one year ago. Not surprisingly, Google Maps is the main beneficiary of the searches and received 74% of the traffic from the search term during the same timeframe.

With a tight race between Google Maps and MapQuest, will innovations such as street views be the deciding factor?

Shop opening times searches: an SEO opportunity?

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000

While perusing this week’s fast moving search terms (i.e. the search terms in each category that experienced the biggest increase in volume between last week and the week before), the list for our Shopping and Classifieds category caught my eye. Last week the three fastest moving search terms for retailers were ‘tesco opening times’, ‘tesco opening hours’ and ‘asda opening times’; while ‘sainsburys opening times’ and ‘sainsburys store locator’ also featured in the top 10.

I was curious to see whether these searches had increase year-year on year, and how they compared with Christmas time, so I created the chart below. As you can see, search volumes for a range of supermarket-related store opening times terms were higher during Christmas, but increased this Easter when compared with last year. As the biggest of the three retailers, Tesco receives the most searches - followed by Asda and Sainsburys

Looking at the search term variations reports for the terms ‘opening time’, ‘opening hours’ and ‘store locator’, all are popular queries. Last week (w/e 11/04/09), UK Internet users searched for 12,100 distinct terms containing the phrase ‘opening times’, 7,200 containing ‘opening hours’ and 500 containing ‘store locator’. As with searches containing the word ‘sale’, the most popular terms are those including shop names. The supermarkets top all three lists, while other popular searches include ‘post office opening times’, ‘b&q opening times’ and ‘b&q store locator’.

Generic – i.e. not shop-specific – ‘opening times’ related searches are less popular, but still significant. ‘good friday opening times’ was the seventh most popular search term to contain the phrase ‘opening times’ last week, while terms such as ‘tesco easter opening times’ and ‘asda easter opening times’ were more popular than generic terms such as ‘easter sunday opening times’ and ‘easter opening times’. It was a similar situation for variations on ‘opening hours’.

Although there were more shop-specific ‘opening times’ related searches over the Christmas period, there were more generic searches in the run up to Easter. As the chart below illustrates, there were four times as many searches for ‘good friday opening times’ last week as there were for ‘boxing day open times’ during Christmas week.

The generic ‘opening times’ related searches also represent missed opportunity for retailers and affiliates. Currently just 64.7% of ‘good Friday opening times’ searches are successful, meaning that a third of people searching for the term last week didn’t click on a link from the search engine results page (SERP). Further evidence of a content gap / SEO opportunity is provided by sites that did manage to pick up traffic from the generic terms. The top to recipient of traffic from ‘good Friday opening times’ searches last week was The AnswerBank, while Yahoo! Answers was top for the term ‘easter opening times’.

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Who Benefits from Circuit City Closure Online

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:40:40 -0500

Back in January, Circuit City announced ceasing all operations, so we thought it would be interesting to analyze which retailers have benefited from their exit in the market. The brand Circuit City is very well known and drove a significant share of searches from consumers using the name to navigate. As a result of the website and store closings, the share of visits that are going to the Circuit City website that included a search term from a portfolio of Circuit City’s branded terms have declined from 87% during the week of Christmas to 68% for the week ending April 4, 2009. Among Circuit City’s former competitors in the electronics arena, the main beneficiaries of the Circuit City searches are Radioshack.com and Bestbuy.com.

Both of the retailers are receiving the search traffic from the portfolio of branded terms in opposite ways. For Radioshack.com, 100% of the traffic from the Circuit City Terms was from paid search over the 4 weeks ending April 4, 2009. With Bestbuy.com, all of the search traffic was driven by organic search results during the same timeframe.

While Circuitcity.com continues to receive visits as the results of searches and other sources, the only content on the website is the message about the store closings. Once they reach that message, visitors often move on to other retailers to look for products. Here there are also two retailers who are the main beneficiaries of the traffic from Circuitcity.com, Bestbuy.com and Walmart.com. During the week of April 4, 2009, Bestbuy.com captured 20% of the downstream traffic from CircuitCity.com and Walmart.com followed with close to 10%. Kmart.com and Sears.com each captured 4% and 2%, respectively.

Online news aggregators – friend or foe?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:41:15 -0500

This week kicked off with the Associated Press voicing concerns about how websites obtain permission to distribute content and share revenues. A debate has sparked about the ‘fair use’ doctrine (publishing a headline and/or sentence from story) and tracking the legal use of the content. Search engines and news aggregators were all somewhat implicated as those who may be misusing content, so we decided to take a look at their impact upon driving traffic to news websites, which ultimately generate ad revenues.

Like many categories, search is one of the main sources that drive traffic to the News & Media category, referring nearly 22% of visits in March 2009. Branded searches for news properties represent a large share of the top search terms driving traffic to the category. Another major source is the front pages of portals such as Yahoo! and MSN, including the personalized versions like My Yahoo and My MSN. In comparison, social networking websites and blogs referred a far smaller share of visits to News & Media websites from links or references posted on their pages.

Traffic moving between News & Media websites is also a main source of traffic equal to search at 21.63% in March 2009. However, the shares of the sources are distributed broadly across a wide number of websites where the highest share coming from any one website was only 2.28%.

Although several of the online aggregators are at the heart of the content distribution argument, they do successfully send visits to news properties rather than keeping them upon their own websites. Two sources that have increased the share of referrals in March 2009 when compared to March 2008 are Drudge Report and The Huffington Post. Others that have remained consistent include Google News, Yahoo! News and My Yahoo.

Festival fever and a good week for the NME

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0000

The sun may be shining, but it’s not quite time for the music festivals yet (it has to start raining for that to happen). However, following the release of the Reading and Leeds Festival line-ups in the NME last week, it is certainly festival season online. As the chart below illustrates, the number of search terms containing the word ‘festival’ has been increasing since Christmas, and notably spiked last week.

Having the exclusive on the line-up announcement was a coup for the NME, and it paid off in terms of traffic. UK Internet visits to the website increased by 37% last week and, as the chart below illustrates, it was the music magazine’s busiest week since last summer. In addition, ‘reading festival’ was the second biggest search term sending traffic to the NME last week after the navigational term ‘nme’. In total, six of the top 10 search terms sending traffic to the site were related to either the Leeds or Reading Festivals.

Looking at the sites visited after the NME last week, 36.7% of downstream traffic went to retail websites. Play.com, which has recently started selling tickets on its site, was the biggest beneficiary. The online entertainment retailer was the number one site visited after the NME last week, picking up 22.3% of the music magazine’s downstream traffic. The NME was also Play.com’s sixth biggest source of traffic last week, accounting for 1 in every 35 visits.

The NME also sent a significant amount of traffic to pure-play ticket resellers, which accounted for 9.5% of the site’s downstream traffic. Over half of those visits went to See Tickets, which was the second largest recipient of traffic from the NME last week after Play.com.

The Reading, Leeds and T4 On The Beach festivals were also the three most searched for music events on ticketing websites last week. This is first time that festivals have taken all of the top 3 positions since we started compiling the data for Music Week last year. For a full list of the top 20 music event (i.e. including festivals and single artist tours) searched on both primary (e.g. Ticketmaster) and secondary (e.g. Seatwave) ticketing websites, make sure to pick up Music Week magazine every Thursday!

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Twitter - Google Marriage - what would it mean?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:31:57 -0500

To piggy back on a post my colleague across the pond, Robin Goad, did yesterday, we thought we'd revisit some of the stats to better understand how things would look if Google were to acquire Twitter.

As the chart below illustrates, US Internet visits to Twitter have increased 194% since the start of the year and nearly 7000 times in the last 12 months (March 08-09). Last week (w/e 04/04/09), Twitter was the 69th most visited website in the US, up from 74 the week before, 86 two weeks ago and 105 three weeks ago. It was the 8th most popular social networking site. The website has enjoyed steady and constant growth. Share of US Internet visits to Twitter have increased every week since mid-November 2008.

I should also add the usual caveat: the service is probably even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

But where does Twitter send its traffic to? It may be the 69th most visited website in the US, but Twitter was also the 66th biggest source of traffic to other websites in the US during March. A few weeks ago we posted data showing where US consumers go after visiting Twitter.

Here is an updated version of the chart from my last post. This time I am using March data and I changed the chart type to ease comparison.

As I mentioned in my last post, "it appears that Twitter is being used as a social network and means of distributing content. This is by no means the only way it is being used - just one standout trend. Twitter.com's clickstream profile is much closer to a social network than to Search Engines or Email Services. Twitter's clickstream differs markedly from search engines in that relatively little traffic goes to retail websites and Education (i.e. Wikipedia). It is also different from Email in that less traffic goes to Dating websites and again, to retail and Business and Finance websites."

In other words, Twitter sends far less traffic to industries that are the big spenders on search engine marketing than does Google.

Hitwise Intelligence - Analyst Weblogs

What gadgets are early adopters searching for?

Budget 2009: paid search tactics

Oprah may be America’s Tweet-heart, but she doesn’t make the earth move Downunder!

Bushfire Searches: 4 week window of peak community interest

Online retailers receiving less traffic from paid search, but more from social networks

UK Internet users spending more time on social networks than shopping online

Oprah Effect on Twitter

Top Searches on Hulu.com

Interest rates: the relationship between online and offline behaviour

Google Maps Surpasses Mapquest in Visits

Shop opening times searches: an SEO opportunity?

Who Benefits from Circuit City Closure Online

Online news aggregators – friend or foe?

Festival fever and a good week for the NME

Twitter - Google Marriage - what would it mean?