Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

Climate Change defeats a Prime Minister

2010-06-24T04:07:09Z

Maybe a simplistic headline, but Australia now has a new Prime Minister after Kevin Rudd stood aside for Julia Gillard to take the reins of the Federal Labor Party and the Australian Government.

An impending federal election combined with a series of political errors, such as the handling of the Home Insulation Scheme and the backflip on the ‘greatest moral challenge of our generation’ - Climate Change, forced the hand of the Labor Party factional heavyweights jittery enough to make a move.

Throw in the Mining Super Tax as part of the overall Tax Reform, Immigration and Health Reform and Kevin Rudd’s government was facing challenges from all sides. But what do we as the Australian public care about? Which issues are the ones we are interested and invested in, and did the Prime Minister read the temperature of the community accurately? Obviously not.

Using search data as a way of tracking interest in specific subjects I have constructed a series of search term portfolios based around Health Reform, Tax Reform (including the Mining Super profits tax), Climate Change, and Immigration (including asylum seekers) to gain a grasp on the comparative importance to Australian Internet users.

Of all of the issues, Climate Change has the highest level of awareness followed by Immigration, the two issues that Kevin Rudd has been criticised most heavily for over the past months. The Insulation Scheme while a debacle on many fronts didn’t capture the broader interest in the community and was able to be overcome comparatively quickly.

Comparing search volumes of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, against the backdrop of Tony Abbott, highlights the increased interest in Julia Gillard over the past months, increasing 450.0% since the beginning of April (week ending 19 June 2010 compared to week ending 3 April 2010), while Kevin Rudd has also seen an upswing of interest over the same period of 93.8%. These upward shifts for the Labor Party Leaders occurred at the same time that interest in Liberal Leader Tony Abbott fluctuated from its 2010 peak in week ending 3 April to currently sit 73.8% lower, a concern for the Liberal’s confronting a 2010 election campaign.

Interestingly the top 10 search term variations for each of the Labor Leaders are not too critical or negative, as could be expected, considering the recent political events.

One interesting variation to note is the 8th most searched for term featuring Julia Gillard – ‘Julia Gillard treason’. Maybe the Rudd family will be responsible for this search terms growth during the current week.

As Australia’s first female Prime Minister it is an historical appointment and the newspapers and bloggers will have a field day picking over the remains of Kevin Rudd’s political career. What will be interesting to watch will be the rebuilding of Julia Gillard. I have no doubt that social media will have a very large part to play and it will be fascinating to watch it unfold.

One thing that can be sure is that Labor is listening and Julia Gillard will put Climate Change back on the current agenda before any election will be called.

Could this have the unintended outcome of being the remaking of Malcolm Turnbull?

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Is the World Cup of Tourism value?

2010-06-23T03:43:30Z

How do we judge the value of large international sporting events such as the World Cup Soccer to the host nation?

- Infrastructure investment
- Employment gains
- Increased tourism – immediate and ongoing
- Ongoing awareness

It’s obviously all of these things and many more that go into making a decision and commitment to aggressively bid for an event of the magnitude of the Olympic Games or World Cup. The bid committees no doubt have a number of various formulae that support their decision and gain government support for a bid.

Using search terms as an indicator, I have categorised the top 1,000 search terms that include ‘south africa’ into four portfolios and tracked the comparative growth of each search portfolio.

General enquiries about South Africa. i.e. non World Cup specific, have been on a steady incline since the beginning of the year and in the week ending 19 June increased 121.0% over the week prior to the start of the World Cup (week ending 29 May 2010).

World Cup specific ‘south africa’ searches as expected rose sharply as the event finally got onto the pitch, with search volumes increasing 14-fold (+1,300%) in week ending 12 June 2010, then receding in week ending 19 June 2010 to be 355% higher than in week ending 29 May 2010..

Other sports including cricket and rugby experienced a doubling of search volumes (+100.0%) in the past week, but off a much lower base, the previous weeks peak (week ending 12 June 2010)is reflective of the current South Africa vs. West Indies cricket series currently taking place in the Caribbean.

Tourism related searches for South Africa rose 133.3% in week ending 19 June compared to week ending 29 May 2010, The chart highlights the gradual build of tourism related searches from early March and then a steeper growth from the start of May.

Leading search terms within the Tourism portfolio are:

So things are looking good for South Africa’s tourism efforts; later in the year we’ll be able to judge whether they have been able to retain some ongoing benefit post the World Cup.

Locally Australia’s Football Federation announced recently that it has decided to withdraw from the bid for the 2018 World Cup and focus their energies solely on winning the host nation rights for the 2022 World Cup. A specially developed website has been built to harness support and share information and news about the bid. Come Play (www.australia2018-2022.com.au) was launched in June 2009 and after the immediate hype settled down while drawn out negotiations and consultation over ground rights with the NRL and AFL played out, sometimes very publicly.

As the World Cup drew closer the site experienced strong growth, but not back to the highs of the original launch in June 2009.

Search volumes though do provide another perspective into the psyche of the Australian Internet user, and with the chart below highlights the search volume has climbed back to the levels of the launch of the bid.

Though not reflected in share of visits growth to the official bid website, the search volumes have grown over 6 times (511.1%) in week ending 19 June 2010 compared to the week prior to the start of the World Cup, week ending 29 May 2010.

A goal or two on the pitch may further support Australia’s bid to bag the World Cup in 2022, because after the debacle against Germany last week and the draw with Ghana, it’s unlikely to come downunder in 2010.

We’ll continue to update information around online behaviour relating to the World Cup in South Africa over the coming weeks, to keep up to date connect with us via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Ronaldinho & The Group of Death

2010-06-09T02:31:23Z

The buzz is building around Australia’s second consecutive tilt at the Football (Soccer) World Cup which begins on 13 June against Germany in the first game of the so called “Group of Death” that also features Ghana and Serbia.

Australian Internet searches featuring ‘world cup’ increased 139.8% last month (week ending 5 June 2010 compared with week ending 8 May 2010) as Australian searched for information via over 5,000 search variations. The ten most popular search variations of ‘world cup’ were;

With interest around the final make-up of the squad and the controversial friendlies with New Zealand on 24 May and the USA on 5 June, the volume of search for the Socceroos has quadrupled in the fortnight since week ending May 22 (+314.5%).

Interest in Fantasy Football competitions and in sports betting or the available odds have generated increased search volumes in the in week ending 5 June (compared to week ending 22 May), World Cup fantasy Football searches increasing 183.3% and World Cup Odds and Sport Betting related searches jumping 225.0%.

Team related queries have increased 76.5%, and search interest in fixtures and World Cup dates increased 95.0% and 55.6%, respectively, comparing week ending 5 June to 22 May 2010.

Search queries relating to the TV and Online coverage of the World Cup increased 76.5% since week ending 22 May, with SBS being the main recipient. SBS has dominated the World Cup coverage related search terms with six featured in the top ten search queries, well ahead of Foxtel’s first appearance in the search volume rankings at number 15.

Of the 939 athlete’s within the provisional squads for participating countries, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo was the most searched for World Cup athlete, outpointing Australian stars Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell. Brazil’s decision to cut Ronaldinho from the squad seems to have done his popularity no harm being one of seven internationals to make the 10 most searched for footballers last week.

We’ll continue to update information around online behaviour relating to the World Cup in South Africa over the coming weeks, to keep up to date connect with us via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

iPad - Data Plans and Apps lead the way

2010-05-24T08:02:51Z

In previous blogs we commented on the release of the iPhone and the changes in search behaviour from the initial product announcement through to the launch. In Sandra’s previous posts ’iPhone Australian Launch - Features and Apps driving Consumer Interest’ and ’iPhone plans and prices top of mind’ she tracked the change in consumer interest which moved from product and applications searches to an increasing focus on data plans and prices as the launch date loomed.

With only four days until the iPad is released in Australia, there are similarities in search behavior with an increased interest in data plans and phone companies, whilst application searches haven’t been as dominant after iPad’s the initial announcement.

With Apple initially launching the iPad in the US, Australians have been able to read reviews and news from the US market to understand the benefits on owning an iPad, before its launch here. Applications are no longer the mystery they were when the iPhone was launched, so the excitement/interest, whilst still relatively strong, hasn’t been the key search driver.

The major interest has been around news, reviews, pricing, applications and of course the final release date of the iPad.

Optus and Telstra are the dominant carrier’s associated with the iPad, no doubt benefiting from iPhone’s popularity, followed by Vodafone. Telstra and Optus’ positions are reversed, when compared to the weeks leading up to Apple’s iPhone launch in July 2008 – this is seen through the search term portfolios relating to iPad and the respective carrier brand.

Last week ‘optus ipad’was ranked 5th amongst all search term variations of ‘ipad’, followed by ‘telstra ipad’ (week ending 22 May 2010).

Traffic generated from carrier branded search terms are being fragmented by news sources such as Gizmodo, IT Wire, APC magazine and others. Both Optus and Vodafone have implemented search marketing activities since the week ending 15 May, to capture consumer interest in the iPad, but only Telstra and Optus currently feature data pricing plans.

Telco carriers face a challenge to differentiate themselves from each other and attract consumers, with a search for ‘ipad’ across all carriers (Optus, Telstra and Vodafone), returning a limited number of branded listings on the first page of Goolge’s search results.

The remaining Google listings are all media and forum related results, providing users with an array of choices but impact the carrier’s ability to capture consumers’ full interest in their plans.

This highlights the need for carriers to implement Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies as early as possible to maximise interest in the product and execute Pay Per Click (PPC) in line with consumer interest trends (measureable via search variations).

The combination of PPC and SEO strategies and tactics are an imperative in this highly competitive market and the earlier they are implemented the bigger the advantage or outcome.

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Shop till you drop - The Competition just got hotter!

2010-03-31T04:58:17Z

Online trends are sometimes subtle and other times they are so obvious that they beckon further investigation. Over the past two months we have seen a strong trend appear in the Shopping and Classifieds – Apparel and Accessories industry, with the rise of the exclusive member shopping clubs.

These online clubs function differently from other member-based shopping websites as they offer limited time, members only private sales, offering up to 80% off RRP on selected items.

The first of the exclusive member shopping clubs to increase its online activity in the Experian Hitwise rankings was brandsExclusive . We also a reviewed their visitor acquisition strategy leading into Christmas in a recent blog ’Paths to Retail Success’.

Since week ending 13 February, 2010 Ozsale’s share of visits skyrocketed, propelling it to the number one position in the Apparel and Accessories (Shopping and Classifieds) category. The same week saw the rise of another exclusive members club, BuyInvite which now sits just behind brandsExclusive - making the top three websites in the Apparel and Accessories category all exclusive members shopping clubs.

The rankings within the industry have always been relatively volatile as can be seen by the rankings table above and the three new entrants have immediately challenged the traditional brands and existing online players.

The table below highlights the Mosaic Australia Lifestyle profile of the three exclusive member shopping clubs compared to the overall Apparel and Accessories industry

The over represented Mosaic Australia Groups highlight regional and country Australia’s desire to have access to leading brands at lower prices and to be receiving exclusive offerings. A short description of each of the over represented groups are;

· K - Community Disconnect - Older blue-collar workers and retirees in country and coastal locations
· H - Provincial Optimism - Anglo-Australian blue-collar families in provincial settlements
· I - Farming Stock - Rural landowners and workers in agricultural heartlands

Further analysis of the demographic profile of the websites indicates that:

- 62.7% are female (index of 105 against Apparel and Accessories – Shopping & Classifieds),
- 48.5% aged 25-44 (index 115) and 24.4% aged over 50 (index 101)
- More likely to live in Tasmania (index 144), South Australia (index 112) and Northern Territory (index 109)

One of the contributing factors to the tremendous growth of the exclusive member websites is the frequency of emails promoting new sales and offers, sometimes three or more times a week. This drives their visitation and has a corresponding impact on competitors such as EziBuy and Witchery, whose traffic hasn’t necessarily declined in real terms.

The importance of the email database development is highlighted in the dependence of the three websites upon email for their traffic. The chart below highlights the importance of email comparing the exclusive member shopping clubs and the overall Apparel and Accessories (Shopping and Classifieds) industry.

The test for the exclusive member shopping clubs will be the quality of their sale items and desirability of the brands, which promise up to 80% off retail prices, and if this enough to keep shoppers coming back time and time again.

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Chatroulette: Sensation or fad?

2010-02-19T03:14:15Z

The water cooler talk on Monday morning was about a new site people had discovered called Chatroulette – a website that allows random strangers to talk face to face via webcam. Within days we had discovered articles in the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning-Herald, the UK Guardian, the New York Times, and then yesterday my colleague, Robin Goad, in the UK ,beat me to the punch providing some statistical background of the web sites rise in prominence in the UK.

Online global sensations are far and few between and there is no guarantee whether Chatroulette is a flash in the pan novelty or whether it can be leveraged into a longer term idea of substance. This is a smart piece of hacking / mashing from a Russian teenager that makes use of Skype to connect people around the world, and as the name suggests, it is a bit of a roulette gamble on the strangers you’ll connect to via your webcam.

The chart below highlights the accelerated growth as the word started to spread, and a media driven peak on 16 February. Chatroulette currently stands as the 481th ranked website visited by Australian Internet users (17 February 2010), down from the peak of 356 the previous day and the number two webcam website behind Coastal Watch.

As reported in Robin’s blog, the UK profile of Chatroulette’s audience are wealthier and more sophisticated compared to the general visitor to the webcam industry. A similar trend has emerged in Australia with the three wealthier profiled Mosaic Groups being highly over indexed against the Australian online population – Privileged Prosperity (The most affluent families in the mist desirable locations), Academic Achiever (Wealthy areas of educated professional households) and Young Ambition (Educated and high-earning young singles and sharers in the inner suburbs).

Last week (week ending 13 February 2010) Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums were the main drivers of visits to Chatroulette, delivering 76.3% of upstream traffic (Search Engines 38.4% and Social Networking and Forums 37.9%) with Blogs and Personal Websites being the third highest upstream provider with 4.2%.

The novelty already may be wearing off for Chatroulette as average visit times have dropped from a peak of 14 minutes 25 seconds in the week ending 2 January 2010, to 6 minutes 38 seconds last week (although an increase on the previous week). The peak in January was more than likely driven by the holiday period, with users having more spare time to surf the web for entertainment whereas the lower average visit time experienced last week may be impacted by Australian time zones.

Whether Chatroulette will be a global sensation or a passing fad is sure to become clearer in the weeks ahead.

My School drives growth for My School Australia

2010-02-17T00:25:00Z

An inadvertent outcome from the launch of the Federal Government’s My School website was the huge traffic spurt to the social network, My School Australia.

The Federal Governments awaited education website, My School (www.myschool.edu.au) launched at the start of the school year, with much debate whether the website was simply a rankings table for schools limited value or if it serves a more substantial ongoing purpose.

My School publishes comparable results based on Australian schools with a statistically similar student population, versus being a straight ranking of schools from 1 to 9,000+.

As a parent I feel vindicated (perhaps a little smug) that my son’s school is performing well above statistically similar schools (and the alternate local schools). School children in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed by the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (www.naplan.edu.au), and the results are published annually on the My school website.

My School ranked as the 28th most visited website by Australian Internet users on 28 January across All Categories and the number three Education website by Australian internet users. Within five days it had fallen out of the top 100 websites (ranking 105th on 1 February) as the news and debate subsided, and has since fallen to 860th on 15 February.

The Computers and Internet - Search Engines industry delivered 61.4% of upstream traffic to My School in the week of its launch. Search terms containing a variation of My School (including misspellings), accounted for 87.9% of all upstream visits from Search Engines. The high level of branded search terms indicate the PR success / awareness of the My School website launch.

The top 20 upstream websites featured only five News and Media - Print websites, with Google.com.au and Google.com being the prominent referral websites. Social Networking and Forums were also prominent, with Facebook and the education specific network, My School Australia (myschoolaustralia.ning.com) capturing increased traffic and then referring visitors to the My School website.

The ranking of the social network, My School Australia, moved from 97,979 to 598 in week ending 30 January, an inadvertent by-product of the Governments My School launch. It has since dropped back to a ranking of 15,872 as of 15 January.

The debate will continue about the validity and value of the My School website, but there are 12,000+ happy social network members and one relieved father since the launch.

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The Apple Tablet - iWonder!

2010-01-25T05:50:45Z

The computing industry and no doubt a few other industries, such as publishing, are holding their collective breath for the announcement of the impending release of the Apple iSlate / iPad / iTablet this coming Thursday morning (8am Australian East Coast time UTC/GMT +11 hours)

There is already substantial hype about what the product specs and name will be and competitors are already scrambling to announce devices similar to what they expect to see in Thursday’s announcement, not dissimilar to what was experienced at the time of the iPhone announcement on January 9, 2007.

Pre-announcement there is more interest around the upcoming Apple tablet device than there was at the time of the iPhone announcement. The leading three search terms relating to the upcoming announcement, (“apple tablet”, “apple islate”, and “islate apple”) accounted for 0.0044% of all searches in week ending 23 January 2010, over seven times greater than the share of searches generated by the top three search terms relating to the iPhone (“iphone”, “apple phone” and “apple iphone”) in week ending 6 January 2007.

So strong is the interest in the announcement, “apple tablet” is the most searched for product related search variation of Apple in week ending 23 January 2010, with almost twice the search volume of Apple iPhone.

In the top 1,000 search terms containing “Apple” there were 30 tablet device related search variations, and only one related term in the top 1,000 search terms contain “Mac”. Consumers clearly understand the product distinctions between the line up of desktop and laptop computers carrying the Mac branding or designation and the portable devices bearing the “I” prefix.

With no prior announcement of the name, the rumour mill has run wild with all sorts of guesses, the most popular being the itablet, islate and ipad. The following chart indicates the search volume around the top related search terms in the week ending 23 January 2010.

While these don’t indicate Apple’s preferred name, it does indicate the names that have grabbed the most attention, most likely driven by influential blogs and news and media websites.

The main beneficiaries of the leading term ‘apple tablet’ in the past week (week ending 23 January 2010) has been a mix of Technical / Computer, Blogs and News and Media websites, with the most obvious exclusion the local traditional newspaper websites.

Apple has been tight-lipped as usual about the new product release and the interest is building. Whether this interest will translate to another successful product launch and transform another industry vertical as the iPod did with Music will have to wait until closer to launch of the yet unnamed product. iWonder what it will be?

Social Media overtakes Search Engines

2010-01-22T04:26:13Z

In our recent report on Social Media in Australia, ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network”, I highlighted Social Networking and Forums growth and predicted that it would overtake Search Engines in visits during the weeks either side of Christmas.

The chart below confirms that during the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time. While this looked like a short term lead, we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in week ending 16 January 2010.

A daily pattern that has emerged over the past three months is Social Networking and Forums attracting increase share during the weekends, predominantly on Sunday. The first daily lead by Social Networking and Forums compared to Search Engines was on Sunday 15 November 2009, and the first full weekend was Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd November 2009.

In week ending 26 December 2009 Social Networking and Forums gained its highest market share for the year peaking at 14.8% on Christmas Day. Search Engines highest market share day of 2009 was Saturday 10 January at 14.5%.

Underpinning Social Networking and Forums’ growth has been a number of key websites, including Facebook and YouTube. Facebook and YouTube both had their highest share of visits for 2009 on Christmas Day (25 December 2009) with shares of 8.0% and 2.2% respectively.

2010 is set to be another year of strong growth for the Social Networking and Forums category, and for marketers the challenge is to effectively participate and generate word of mouth that has measurable and effective business outcomes.

Paths to Retail Success

2010-01-19T22:29:33Z

In the lead up to Christmas retailers implemented varied strategies and tactics to deliver buyers to their online stores, some with outstanding success.

What stands out is that there’s more than one way to thrive online, and not just one strategy that should be implemented across the board for retailers to achieve success.

Each retailer and their customer base is different and react to different and multiple marketing stimuli. To highlight this I reviewed three of the top retailers brandsExclusive (www.brandsexclusive,com.au), EziBuy (www.ezibuy.com.au) and Threadless (www.threadless.com) in the Shopping and Classified – Apparel and Accessories industry (week ending 19/12/2009) and how they garnered website traffic in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2009

When each website peaked in market share differed leading into Christmas, as did how they generated their traffic. By reviewing the upstream clickstream data from the individual websites we are able to see the differences in strategy.

brandsExclusive, an invitation only website promising heavy discounts on fashion and designer brands, share of visits peaked pre Christmas during the week ending 19 December 2009. The clickstream chart below depicts the heavy industry influence of the Shopping and Classifieds – Rewards and Directories and Computers and Internet – Paid to Surf, reflecting a strong push of visitors from the website Rewards Central. Email Services, while declining in comparison closer to Christmas, was also a major contributor to the website’s success.

EziBuy has developed a strong customer base over many years as one of Australia’s most popular online Apparel and Accessory websites. From mid-November Email Services drove EziBuy’s share of traffic and was the most prominent driver of visits to EziBuy when it hit its peak during the week ending 12/12/2009. Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums also contributed strongly to their EziBuy’s pre Christmas campaign.

Threadless is a t-shirt website that relies upon contributors for designs and has developed a strong community, so it is no surprise that they have been able to leverage this community through social media websites. During the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) Social Networking and Forums websites were responsible for 67.7% of upstream visits to Threadless.

Facebook was the leading driver of traffic to Threadless represented 63.5% of all traffic from Social Networking and Forums. Threadless have an active community within Facebook with over 104,000 fans of their brand and combined with display advertising delivered a strong outcome pre Christmas.

As we have seen here these three leading Apparel and Accessories websites each had a different path to success over the crucial pre Christmas retail period:
· brandsExclusive – Rewards and Directories / Paid to Surf.
· EziBuy – Email Services
· Threadless – Social Networking and Forums.

There is no absolute strategy or tactic to apply for success, but through testing, meaningful measurement, benchmarking against competitors and by understanding the variety of strategies being applied you can apply a set of tactics or overall strategies that will best engage and activate your customers online.

How do your competitors drive their marketing online?

The Politics of Leadership

2009-12-09T22:39:50Z

The change of Opposition leader last week piqued my curiosity as to whether we could have used the same theories that our colleagues internationally apply when looking to pick the winners of American idol or the UK’s X Factor. (See Richard Seymour’s excellent analysis of the remaining contestants in the UK’s X Factor.)

The chart below shows the search volume around each of the main players in last week’s saga, Joe Hockey, the deposed Malcolm Turnbull and the new Liberal Opposition leader Tony Abbott. Kevin Rudd has been included to provide some context around the volume of interest around last week’s events.

Using search volume as a guide in the weeks leading to the Liberal Party leadership spill, it seemed that only Joe Hockey had a profile to match Malcolm Turnbull in the party room.

Tony Abbott was not on the public’s radar, but once the first spill (25 November) occurred he shot to prominence and was able to create enough support within the Liberals as well as gaining a larger share of search volume the week prior to him garnering the role of Liberal Opposition leader.

While Kevin Andrews could not mix it with Malcolm Turnbull, the newspapers seemed to be anointing Joe Hockey if he decided to challenge and the search volumes responded accordingly, but what was the hoopla around Tony Abbott?

That photo of course, in week ending 28 November the search volume of search terms containing ‘Tony Abbott’ focused 98.3% on his name (including email, and mp) and 1.7% focused on his profile (age, photo and biography).

However during the week when he took the top Opposition job by slenderest of margins (week ending 5 December 2009), the public interest in Tony Abbott increased wanting to know more about the new Liberal leader.

76% of searches about Tony Abbott focused on his name (including email, and mp) and searches relating to his biography increased to 7.4%. The biggest mover was the now infamous ‘speedos’ photo, or as some searchers described them ‘budgie smugglers’. The balance of ‘tony abbott’ searches included family (2.5%), social media (1.5%) religion (0.9%), his book (0.9%), Labour Party (0.8%), Liberal Party (0.6%) and miscellaneous searches including jokes, sex and sport (1.0%)

Interest in actual policy searches was just 1.6% of all search volume.

Based on the uplift in approvals reported in the newspapers relating to preferred Prime Minister, it seems the image of Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers has done him no harm.

Social Networking and Forums take over Search Engines in New Zealand

2009-12-07T03:14:16Z

In New Zealand Social Networking and Forums has surpassed Search Engines in the week ending 5 December 2009. I have been tracking this on a daily basis and over the past 6 weeks Social Networking and Forums had been ahead across the weekends since the weekend of 25 and 26 October, and taking the lead on Fridays since 11 November 2009. In week ending 5 December Social Networking and Forums led over five days of the week, only trailing Search Engines across Wednesday and Thursday.

In the 12 months Social Networking and Forums share of visits has increased 30.7% compared to Search Engines growth of 3.6% of visits by all New Zealand Internet users, (comparing the week ending 5 December 2009 to the week ending 6 December 2008.).

In Australia our recent report ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network” we predicted that Social Networking and Forums industry would overtake Search Engines to become the most visited industry by Australian Internet users.

The trend we identified has continued over the past 6 weeks and the changeover is likely to happen in the coming weeks pre- Christmas as predicted. In Australia the Social Networking and Forums industry now sits just 0.1% behind Search Engines share of all visits.

In the past 12 months, Search Engines share of visits has increased marginally by 1.7% (comparing the week end 5 December 2009 and the week ending 6 December 2008), while Social Networking and Forums industry has grown 26.8%, mostly in the past 6 months.

We are still to see strong commercialisation of Social Networks which will then provide a strong alternative to Search and Display advertising methods, although anecdotally Facebook display advertising is starting to deliver positive results for clients across a range of industry verticals.

Facebook driving the Industry growth (NZ)

2009-12-04T04:58:01Z

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter make up 67.0% of the Social Networking and Forums industry, and receive substantial media coverage. They each sit inside the top 50 websites visited by all New Zealand Internet users in November 2009:

2. Facebook
6. You Tube

18. Bebo

35. Twitter

43. MySpace

The following chart represents the past three years of growth in the Social Networking and Forums industry and highlights Facebook as the engine powering the growth in share of visits by New Zealand users.

Since December 2007 the Social Networking and Forums category has experienced relative growth of 44.0% (as at November 2009).Facebook has been responsible for almost all of this increase gaining 4.3% share of visits by all New Zealand Internet users.

Facebook’s growth has not slowed in the past year, adding over half the volume growth of the past two years (November 2007- November 2009), and quadrupling its share of visits in the process from 1.4% to 5.8%.

In sharp contrast MySpace has suffered substantial losses of share of visits over the past two years, losing 56.3% to currently hold 0.16% share of all visits, or one in every 625 visits by New Zealand Internet users.

During the past three years MySpace’s share of visits peaked in the month of February 2007 when it held a 0.64% share, responsible for one every 156 visits.

Over the past 12 months the decline in MySpace’s share has continued, shedding 33.0% of its share of visits. This trend indicates further decline in MySpace share unless the recently launched MySpace Music can have a positive impact and halt any further degradation of their share of visits.

Bebo is also under pressure having lost 44.7% of its share of visits in the past year from a peak of 0.87% market share in December 2008, to 0.41% in November 2009, well down from the peak of 2.17% in October 2008.

Online video continues to increase in popularity with YouTube growing its share of visits by 64.2% over the past two years (November 2009 compared to November 2007) to currently hold 1.82% of all visits, or one in every 55 visits. YouTube’s share has levelled in the past year experiencing just 1.1% growth.

Micro-blogging service Twitter has been on an amazing growth curve in the past year and has taken the media attention from Facebook’s performance, largely due to Twitter’s growth numbers being so astonishingly high - 656.6% growth in the past twelve months (comparing November 2009 to November 2008). Note that this data is based on visits to Twitter's website, and does not include application and mobile traffic.

While fortunes have changed for individual websites, the industry has grown predominantly on the back of a single market maker – Facebook. The utility and ubiquity of Facebook through Facebook Connect and third-party applications has established not only a strong aggressive growth path, but sets it in good defensive stead to avoid the audience decline currently being experienced by MySpace and Bebo.

Getting where we want to go…quicker!

2009-11-25T23:53:10Z

Following from yesterday’s post ‘Searches getting longer” today we look at the impact of branded search (aka navigational search) and the trends in the success rates of searches on the major Search Engines used by Australian Internet users.

The following chart analyses the Top 500 search terms used by Australian Internet users in the week ending 14 November 2009 and the corresponding weeks in 2008, 2007 and 2006 to identify the trends.

The search terms are categorised as either generic, non brand specific requests e.g. ‘cheap flights’, and search terms that do contain a brand reference, e.g. ‘village cinemas’.

Over the past three years the number of branded search terms has increased from 409 terms to 451 of the top 500 search terms.

Not only are the number of branded search terms becoming more concentrated within the Top 500 search terms, so is the volume (% of clicks) that the top 500 represent of the top 50,000 search terms. The volume of clicks derived from these branded search terms within the top 500 has increased 62.6% in the past three years, with the largest movement in the past 12 months (29.3%) off a 10.3% increase in terms.

This concentration highlights the increased navigational nature of search, and that users use the search query box as a default url locator, a reason why one of the key features of Google Chrome is the integrated search functionality.

The increase in branded search at the top of the search term rankings, plus the lengthening of search terms seen in my previous post (url for searches getting longer) indicates the increasing specificity of a search and this is reflected in an increase in the search success rates – a successful search is regarded as one that is followed by a click from the results.

In a comparison between week ending 14 November 2009 and the corresponding week in 2008, the leading four search engines have experienced substantial lifts in their successful delivery of search results that generate a click, after a dip in 2008.

The continued innovation and refinement of Search Engines along with more specific search requests now provide users with a positive outcome over 75% of the time.

For marketers you can identify search terms that receive high and low success rates and ensure your site is optimised and paid creative is relevant to maximise outcomes for specific search terms.

Searches getting longer

2009-11-25T05:19:30Z

Last week I spoke at Search Engine Room in Sydney and presented some of the trends we are seeing in how Australian’s interactions with search Engines are changing.

There has been a global trend that my international colleagues have been reporting on for some time – the lengthening of search terms.

The above chart compares the week ending 14 November with the corresponding week in the previous three years and highlights a single year (year on year) decrease in one word search terms of 2.3% and two word search terms of 1.9%.

In contrast search requests longer than three words have increased over the past 12 months by 2.8%, returning to the levels of 2006 and 2007. Four - words have increased 1.2% and 5 words plus have seen a solid increase over the past two years, with a 1.2% increase in the past 12 months.

It’s probably no surprise to see Google.com.au drive the outcomes of the overall industry as it accounts for 74.7% of all searches in week ending 14 November 2009.

There are differences between the Search Engines with Bing’s search queries having a far greater proportion of single and two word requests, 56.2% versus Google.com.au’s 46.7%, Google.com’s 47.0% and Yahoo!7 Search’s 48.1%. One explanation may be the older profile of Bing.com’s audience compared to the Search Engine industry, but I’ll save that analysis for another day.

So what does it mean?

Users are getting more specific with their search engine requests leading to higher search success rates, illustrating how the more specific a request, the more likely a Search Engine is to accurately fulfill that request.

For marketers it is important to treat each Search Engine individually as they each have their own subtle differences. The long tail remains an important consideration and the application of strategies on one Search Engine may not be the optimal approach on another.

In my next update I will look at search success rates and the trends in navigational (branded) search in Australia.

26 November 2009

In response to Seamus's comment below here's a a further comparison breaking out the search term length by word and comparing 2009 and 2008.