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Bebo out from downunder?
Posted: 2009-11-20 05:34:45 UTC
This morning’s online news reported that Bebo is about to close its Australian operations. But what does that really mean?
To Australian Bebo users it means very little, there will be no change to their interaction with their social networks, but to AOL, who purchased Bebo in March 2008, it means a whole lot more, it is a response to not being able to substantially commercialise their audience in Australia against the growing behemoth of Facebook.
Bebo is currently the number 6 ranked website in the Social Networking and Forums industry, behind Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Yahoo! Answers. By way of comparison the following chart highlights the growth of Bebo versus Facebook, MySpace and the Social Networking and Forums industry.
• Social Networking and Forums industry growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = +25.0%
• Facebook growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = +100.9%
• MySpace growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 =-52.1%
• Bebo growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = -53.8%Average visit time comparisons also highlight the Facebook growth and the difficulty the other Social Network are facing in competing effectively. Facebook’s average visit time climbed 23.1% between October 2009 and October 2008 to 25 minutes 57 seconds, while Bebo suffered a 9.6% drop to 22 minutes 34 seconds and MySpace users decreased 7.5% to 24 minutes 30 seconds.
When websites gain momentum such as Facebook is currently experiencing, there is always going to be current competitors pushed aside and reduced to minor roles in the market, just look at the number of Search Engines that couldn’t compete effectively with Google once it hit its stride.
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East Asian Games generating interest
Posted: 2009-11-20 00:52:09 UTC
The 5th East Asian Games on 5 December is for the first time being staged in Hong Kong. This is the first time Hong Kong plays host to a large-scale multi-sport international event.
The East Asian Games brings together 2,300 athletes from 8 countries and territories competing in 22 sports including Badminton, Basketball, Football, Judo, Rowing, Tennis and Wushu
The last major sporting event staged in Hong Kong was the Equestrian event as part of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. To provide an indication of the interest in the East Asian Games, the chart below tracks the share of visits by all Hong Kong Internet users to the official website (http://www.2009eastasiangames.hk) compared with the Beijing Olympics website at the same time leading up to the respective official opening days.
Click to view larger chart· 60 days prior to the opening day of the East Asian Games interest was relatively low compared to the hype and build up that surrounded the Beijing Olympics, receiving only 42% of the share of visits that Olympics website received.
· The interest in the East Asian Games has started to climb and reached parity in terms of share of visits with the Olympics Games website 27 days preceding the opening.
· Share of visits peaked 19 days prior to the east Asian Games commencing;the share of visits was 34.5% higher than the Olympics on the corresponding day.
The growth in share of visits is a positive indicator that Hong Kong Internet users are increasingly interested in the East Asian Games as it nears the opening date.
The key drivers of visits to the East Asian Games website were Search Engines, Social Networking and Forums, Government (HK SAR) and Portal Frontpages industries. During the week ending 7 November 2009, Search Engines were responsible for 21.1% of upstream visits, followed by Social Networking and Forums with 16.1%.
Government websites (8.6%) and Portal Frontpages (8.2%) were also important sources of traffic. As the opening of the Games draws closer News and Media – Print should become more prominent as a driver of visits to the official website, currently responsible for only 1.5% of upstream traffic.
Social Networking and Forums websites, primarily Facebook will play an important role over the coming weeks in driving traffic., Facebook was the number one website in Hong Kong accounting for 13.0% share of all visits during the week ending 7 November 2009 by Hong Kong Internet users.
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The changing face of Social Networks
Posted: 2009-11-18 06:07:41 UTC
This is the first in a blog series reviewing the lifestyle and demographic changes seen in the online audience profiles of the Social Networking and Forums industry in Australia.
The series acts as a sequel to the upcoming Experian Hitwise report ’The Rise and Rise of the Social Network’ and webinar on November 10.
Today, I am going to look at the industry level changes and in the following weeks review the four major players in the social media space – Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.
Since the start of 2009 (the week ending 3 January 2009) the Social Networking and Forums industry share of all Australian Internet visits has increased 14.34 % and command 11.78% of all visits by Australian Internet users, second only to Search Engine’s 12.71%.
I am going to examine the profile of visitors to the Social Networking and Forums by Age, Gender, Geographic and Mosaic Lifestyle profiles to provide a top level understanding of the industry.
Age:
In coming posts we will see the nuances between four of the major social networks, but from an overall industry perspective it is no surprise that the 18-24 age group are highly over represented when compared against the online population.
The 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 age groups all represent a similar percentage of the Social Networking and Forums share of visits and each are over represented against the online population.
Only the 55 years and over age group are under represented in comparison to the online. However, when compared to the start of 2009 they have grown in line with the overall industry maintaining their share of visits.
The fastest growing age group are 25-54 and 35-44, while the 45-54 and 18-24 age groups have experienced a decline in share of visits to the Social Networking and Forums industry this year.
Gender
There has been very little change in the gender profile of the industry since the start of this year (4 weeks ending 31 January 2009). Females are over-represented, and males under represented.
Geographic
Northern Territory and South Australia have the highest representation of users of Social Networking and Forums, while other states are very close to the profile of the Australian online population.
The east coast states dominate with 78.6% of all visits, whilst the other states are experiencing the fastest growth rates in usage. South Australia has seen the most growth in share of users to Social Networking and Forums in 2009 closely followed by Queensland, suggesting that the population was initially a little slower in its acceptance of social media.
Lifestyle Mosaic
The five over represented Lifestyle Mosaic Groups when compared to the Australian online population are:
E: Family Challenge – Mixed family forms with stretched budgets in outer suburbs
K: Community Disconnect – Older blue-collar workers and retires in country and coastal locations.
D: Pushing the Boundaries – Young families living in recent developments on the fringe of major cities.
F: Metro Multiculture – Medium to high density areas with much cultural diversity.This highlights the breadth of diversity of the audiences of Social Networking and Forums, and through specific targeting within different Social Networks marketers have the ability to finely target their desired audience.
C: Young Ambition (educated high-earning young singles and sharers in the inner suburbs) is under represented against the online population but it was the fastest growing segment in 2009. Other Groups to experience strong growth this year are:
K: Community Disconnect,
J: Suburban Subsistence (low income, low-spending households in major regional and outer metro areas),
G: Learner and Earners (students and professionals living in high density lower cost suburbs).
Summary:
· 59.1% audience under 45
· Slight skew to female.
· East Coast represent 78.6% of visits.
· South Australia and Queensland are growing fastest.
· Northern Territory and South Australia had the highest representation against online population.
· Broad and diverse audience.
· Outer suburban/regional areas over represented.
· Young Ambition fastest growing Lifestyle Mosaic Group.
Next I’ll look at Facebook’s audience profile
Download our recent report ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network’
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Breaking News?
Posted: 2009-11-11 07:51:35 UTC
In his most recent post, our General Manager of Global Research, Bill Tancer looked at the importance of Google to the Wall Street Journal following Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments in a Sky News interview (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/09/news-corp-considers-a-google-ban/?mod=rss_WSJBlog) saying he would consider blocking Google from indexing the News Ltd news websites.
To follow Bill’s analysis of the WSJ, here’s a local review of Google’s importance to the News Ltd News titles in Australia. I have aggregated Google Australia (google.com.au), Google (google.com) and Google News Australia (news.google.com.au) to provide a comparative view.
Below is the same chart highlighting upstream traffic to Google (Custom Category) from News Ltd News Titles (Custom Category).
During October 2009, the three websites made up 23.5% of the News Ltd News Titles (Custom category) upstream traffic and sat in positions 1 (Google Australia), 6 (Google)and 10 (Google News Australia).
While newspapers around the globe are facing a similar dilemma experiencing declining revenues - will a micro payment / subscription model turn their fortunes around? Or is Mark Scott, the Managing Director of the ABC correct in suggesting that the plan is a classic play of an old empire in decline?
I’d be interested in your thoughts.
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The Rise and Rise of the Social Network Q&A
Posted: 2009-11-11 07:36:37 UTC
Sandra Hanchard and I presented a webinar titled ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social network’ earlier this week, and due to time constraints we could not answer all the questions posed to us, so the following are our responses. We are interested in your comments on any or all of the questions to add a variety of perspective and thought.
Q: Has the total amount of visits to Search Engines dropped as a result of visits to Social Networks growing?
A: The Search Engines industry is continuing to see growth in share of visits by Australian users, but is increasing at a slower rate than Social Networking and Forums.
In a year-on-year comparison the Search Engines industry has grown its share of visits by 4.6% compared to Social Networking and Forums 27.8% (the week ending 17 October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008).
Q: Leading Social Networks in Australia?
A: The top 10 Social Networks visited by Australians are highlighted in the table below (click for larger image).
Q: Where does real estate sit in this graph?
A: below is the upstream traffic from the top 5 referrers of visits to the Business and Finance – property industry. The Top 100 Social Networks has grown 24.8% in the past 12 months to sit third behind Search Engines and Email Services.
Q: How can a company control content if it were to have a Facebook page?
A: You can have control where no-one but your company posts to the Facebook page, there is a great Mashable article you can reference to find out more With this method of control though you do miss out on having conversations and having customers providing testimonials.
Q: How much can the drop in Twitter usage be attributed to Tweetdeck and Seesmic etc? Would people using Twitter via these 3rd party applications be counted?
A: The data presented referenced the Twitter website only, and that the decrease could be due to users favouring 3rd party applications and mobile to access Twitter.
There are two reports that provide an indication to the amount of usage web based and otherwise. Sysomos in Canada suggests 60% of Twitter usage is web based and Rapleaf in the US found 65% of all ‘tweet’ are posted through the web interface.
Q: Tell us more about Google's social search product and also if the social networking websites are going to become more 'searchified' like Google? what do you think the future is?
A: Google’s social search will bring results from your social network that relate to the search term you have used. It is currently in Google Experimental Labs and if you have a Google profile you can join the experiment.
In essence is take your immediate network from various social networks that you participate in, plus their network as well and returns relevant results, so you are adding relevant public content from your broader social circle.
The results from your social circle appear at the base of normal organic results, clearly identified.
To find out more head over to Google’s Blog to watch a video explanation.This is a further step towards improving the search experience in refining the relevance and timeliness of results, aiding discovery of new information from a trusted resource, i.e. your social circle. Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research, Experian Hitwise has been talking about the next move being towards curated content, and to a degree this is a form of that, leveraging your connections combined intellect and knowledge on a specified subject. The future is a hard question and we’ll leave that for the pundits.
In news just released starting tonight (US time), LinkedIn let users sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa in real-time (http://bit.ly/LRLSY)
Q: What type of time commitment is required to manage a social network presence?
A: It really depends on objectives and your establish success metrics. There are clients who dedicated staff such as a Community Manager and other who have absorbed it into the marketing or customer service functions. The ideal level of commitment will differ from business to business based on their needs and success metrics.
The Social Media space is very supportive and it would be an opportunity to ask this question through Twitter or a Social Media group on LinkedIn.
Q: Can Hitwise measure upstream and downstream data from a company official Facebook fan page?
A: It can be done via a custom report to the database but depends upon the size of sample being substantial enough to access useable data. If you are interested in this, please contact your account manager or email csm.ap@hitwise.com.
Q: Can you explain the Internal search of Social Networks - does this mean people accessing search engines from Social Networks?
A: We have the ability to provide search results that users enter within websites, including social networks. This differs from our search data that is based on search engine usage; primarily on terms that send users to third-party websites.
Q: Is there any international standard for Social Network measurement?
A: There are a number of metrics that provide guidance on the effectiveness of Social Networks; including visits, average session time, page views and audience segmentation.
Q: Are there any other new technologies emerging that may potentially pose a threat to Facebook?
A: It is always risky to answer either in a positive or negative manner. There is a huge amount innovation underway around the world looking for the next big thing. The strength of Facebook is in its utility and ubiquity, with applications and the ability to interact with third-party websites through Facebook Connect maintains their strong position, but it is a game of continued innovation and improvement to maintain leadership. We have seen before some of the largest sites suffer declines for a variety of reason, so while Facebook is a dominant Social Network at the moment that does not provide a guarantee for the future.
Q: Do you happen to know the impact of Ning on the social networking industry?
A: From an overall sense Ning (www.ning.com) has not has a great deal of success with Australian users, currently ranked at 567 in the Social Networking and Forums industry.
Thanks everyone for participating in the webinar and we look forward to your comments and thoughts.
Make sure you are following us on Twitter.
Sandra and Alan
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Climate Change – An Online Perspective
Posted: 2009-10-16 02:14:36 UTC
Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. I join over 7,000 bloggers worldwide who are all sharing their thoughts and insights into this year’s theme ‘Climate Change'.
The recent release of the fifth annual Lowy Institute poll surveyed public opinion around a broad range of foreign policy issues, including climate change.
Key attitudinal changes towards Climate Change in the poll between findings in 2009 compared to 2006 include;
· ‘People unsure if global warming is really a problem and no action should be taken’ increased 85.7% to 13% of respondents.
· ‘People seeing that it is a serious and pressing problem and requires immediate action' decreased 29.4% to 48% of respondents
Other findings indicated that 76% of people see Climate Change as a problem and 60% see that finding a solution is becoming more urgent.
There seems to be a lowering of concern in these responses and so I have turned to search data to see if general interest around the issues of Climate Change has also cooled.
Searches for terms relevant to Climate Change have increased 6.5% over the past 12 months, (w/e 10 October compared to w/e 11 October 2008) and while there have been troughs and peaks over the past three years the overall level of search around Climate Change has declined 23.3% (w/e 10 October 2009 compare to w/e 14 October 2006)..
As an indicator of interest in a given topic the search results provide a similar view to the results from the Lowy Institute poll.
The chart below represents the downstream websites from a portfolio of search terms relating to Climate Change and Global Warming. I have analysed the top 100 websites and categorised them to provide a view of where Australians go when specifically searching for information around the subject. The top 100 websites represent 76.8% of visits from the search portfolio in the 12 weeks ending 10 October 2009.
While News and Media websites provide coverage and discussion of issues surrounding Climate Change and corresponding Government initiatives, when it comes to the Australian’s looking for specific information they turn to the Government websites, both National and State. Government websites represent 38.2% of traffic from the portfolio, with commercial websites receiving 12.0%, relying on a heavy emphasis towards Government Rebates for greener energy in their marketing efforts.
Organisations such as Greenpeace and the United Nations along with Reference websites like Wikipedia also receive a strong level of visits from the search portfolio, while News and Media websites and Social Media websites do not garner substantial levels of visits around Climate Change.
News and Media websites play an important part in the discussion and dissemination of information and news as it happens, but Government cannot rely on this coverage as a strategic driver for further discovery of policy and legislative direction.
The following table indicates where the 14 State and Federal Government Climate Change websites receive their traffic. Search Engines are the most important driver of visits generating 45.3% of all visits in September 2009, followed by a range of Government and Environmental websites.
News and Media websites generate only 1.52% of traffic to these key Government websites, highlighting the opportunity for the Governments to market their websites to deliver comprehension around complex and often confusing subjects.
Although search levels around Climate Change have decreased in the past year, the level of paid search activity is a low 2.5% (4 weeks ending 10 October 2009) compared to the all websites visited by Australian Internet users paid search rate of 4.9%.
In search marketing it is important to work with the language of the users. Within the portfolio the top search term for the 12 weeks ending 10 October is ‘global warming’ with 11.4% of search volume, well ahead of ‘climate change’ the third ranked search term accounting for 6.3% of the portfolio’s volume.
The opportunities for Governments to maximise interest and generate increased understanding include;
· Internal marketing efforts across Government Departments and between State and Federal Governments.
· Search marketing, both paid and search engine optimisation.
· Domain name strategy, www.globalwarming.gov.au is not being utilised, yet ‘global warming’ search term is almost twice the volume of ‘climate change’.
· Social Media – a resource for continually measuring the heat of the subject as well as being a part of the community conversations.
· Display /affiliate advertising across Portals, Email Services, News and Media, and Weather websites.
Visit www.blogactionday.org for further information and posts relating to Climate Change.
NB: Portfolio comprises of 156 of search terms that drive traffic to the Climate Change specific sites and variations of the term ‘climate’.
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eBay 10 Years On
Posted: 2009-10-13 08:59:02 UTC
Last week eBay Australia’s website celebrated its 10th anniversary, so I thought it timely to have a look at the website’s performance over the past few years.
Over the past 10 years eBay Australia has had many local competitors come and go, amongst them GoFish and Stuff, only to see them fold under the continued success of the eBay brand. In other sectors, established brands have risen and fallen and through all of this eBay has continued to prosper.
eBay Australia has the second highest online penetration rate amongst local Internet users, only behind eBay UK, when compared to the markets measured by Experian Hitwise. This highlights the strength and dominance of the eBay brand in the Australian market.
The chart below aggregates the top 10 eBay sites visited by local users, highlights the comparative strength of the brand across Australia, UK, US, Canada and Singapore.
In the past three years Australian Internet users’ visits to the online Auction industry has declined 7.8%, impacted by increased competition from Classifieds brands such as Gumtree and Craigslist and the rising share of visits attributed to Social Media brands such as Facebook.
The Classified industry has increased 41.7% over the past three years (September 2009 compared to October 2006) on the back of large increases by the local Gumtree websites (200 to 900%+). Auctions websites maintain a commanding share of visits enjoying 7 times as many visits by comparison to Classifieds websites and one in every 49 visits by Australian Internet Users.
eBay is the dominant brand in Australia, with 39 of its branded websites accounting for 88.3% of Auction visits. eBay Australia accounts for 81.9% of eBay websites, and 72.3% of all Auction visits.
Ranked as the leading Auctions and Shopping Classifieds website for the past three years, eBay is currently the number 7 most visited website by Australian Internet users behind Google (.com.au and .com), Facebook, Live Mail, NineMSN and YouTube.
The term ‘ebay’ was the fourth most searched for term during the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 also featuring the in the 6th and 54th highest volume search terms, consolidating these terms places the eBay brand as the third most search for brand online behind Facebook and YouTube, with almost 1 in every 100 search terms containing the eBay brand, (0.98%).
eBay’s audience could be described as spanning all elements of Australian society with an emphasis on blue collar workers in new and outer suburbs plus country and coastal centres. For the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 the four most over represented Mosaic Lifestyle Groups also reflect the largest share of visits to eBay. Over the past 12 months there has been minimal change to audience profile of eBay offering opportunities to develop strategies and tactics to increase share of the more affluent and metropolitan Mosaic Groups.
Other key statistics include:
* Average visit time increased 55% since October 2006 to 29 minutes 54 seconds.
* Gender split 53.3% Female, 46.7% Male (index of 101 and 99 against the Australian Online Population)
* 25-34 (108) and 35-44 (119) age-groups are over-represented on eBay Australia compared to the online population and make up a combined 46.3% of visits.
* 81.8% of audience on east coast states (QLD, NSW, VIC and TAS), with Tasmania (112), SA (112) and VIC (106) having the highest over representation against the online population.Happy Birthday eBay!
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Experian Hitwise
Posted: 2009-09-10 08:03:28 UTC
Hi All,
You may notice a new identity to Hitwise today that reflects the integration of our brand with that of our parent, Experian. While the look and feel of our brand may change – the values, commitment and quality that have made Hitwise a market leader will not. Learn More
Cheers
Alan
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Twitter’s Growing Influence
Posted: 2009-09-08 06:04:31 UTC
We have all been aware of Twitter’s amazing growth over the past 6 months, including the impact that global celebrities (such as Oprah, Britney Spears, Ellen de Generes and Ashton Kutcher) have had on the uptake and membership of Twitter in March 2009.
Twitter’s phenomenal growth has also seen it become an increasingly influential part of the web landscape, driving discovery and sharing of a multitude of other websites as it grows. To measure the growing influence of Twitter I have reviewed the number of sites in the Upstream (websites visited before Twitter) and Downstream (websites visited after Twitter) clickstream to see if the growth is in line with the overall trends and if the number of upstream websites has been key to the market share growth of Twitter.
Last week Twitter hit an all time high in terms of All Categories ranking and market share, according to Hitwise Australia.. Twitter is now the 26th ranked website visited by Australian Internet users (week ending 5 September 2009) with a market share of 0.29%, now capturing more Australian visits than news.com.au (0.28%), RealEstate.com.au (0.28%), The Age (0.21%), AFL.com.au (0.18%) and Amazon.com (0.11%). Twitter’s share of visits and ranking maybe considerably higher when taking into account usage through the various desktop and mobile applications.
The chart below shows the increase in the number of websites, both before and after visiting Twitter, growing rapidly around the time of the Ashton Kutcher challenge to CNN to reach 1 million users (he now has over 3.4 million followers), overlaid with Twitter’s market share growth (on the secondary axis).
Click chart to view larger image.Over the past 6 months the number of sites driving traffic to Twitter has increased 479% (comparing the weeks ending 5 September and 14 March 2009)while Twitter’s market share in visits has increased a similar amount, +460%. In the past month the growth continues with Twitter’s market share increasing 42% and the number of sites in the upstream clickstream also up 42% (week ending 5 September compared to week ending 15 August 2009).
Twitter drives downstream visits to over 17,000 downstream websites (17,166 in week ending 5 September 2009) with other Social Networking sites being the major recipient of visitors from Twitter (18.42% of downstream visits during week ending 5 September 2009).
As my colleague Heather Hopkins noted in May of this year in reference to the US market, “Twitter is being used as a social network and a means of distributing content. This is by no means the only way it is being used – just one standout trend.”
Photography sites (such as Twitpic), garnered 11.1% and Search Engines 6.8%, while Multimedia sites (4.9%), Blogs and Personal websites (4.6%) and Email Services (4.2%) all receive more of Twitter’s Clickstream than News and Media (Print), who receive 3.4%.
The following chart shows downstream visits by industry. The dark blue bars represent the parent industry, while the red bars represent sub-categories. For example, Photography is a sub-category of Entertainment.
The leading sites receiving traffic from Twitter in the table below are dominated by the other Social Networking sites and led by the photo sharing site Twitpic (www.twitpic.com), which itself has had a meteoric ride up the rankings on the back of Twitter’s success. In the past 12 months Twitpic’s share of visits has increased 248%%.It is currently the number three Photography site and ranked 208 across All Categories , according to Hitwise rankings (week ending 5 September 2009).
In the future there will be many websites that ride the coat-tails of another to success by providing a complimentary meaningful utility and service. What utility or service can you provide within Social Networking?
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The King, the Angel and the Hoax.
Posted: 2009-06-30 02:32:52 UTC
Pop culture is a substantial driver of online behaviour, and the untimely death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson and the passing of Charlie’s Angels Farah Fawcett last week provided celebrity websites with large single day gains of Australian Internet visits. While actor Jeff Goldblum’s death on set in New Zealand was prematurely reported it also added to media frenzy and online activity.
The King
Michael Jackson’s death has seen sales of his music dominate the Amazon best seller list (25 of the top 50 CDs on 29 June) and six of the top 10 albums on iTunes, it has also propelled celebrity websites up the rankings locally.As news of Michael Jackson’s death hit Australia on Friday 26 June 2009, the Hitwise Lifestyle - Personalities category experienced an increase in daily traffic share of 61%, while Music - Bands and Artists increased 89% and News and Media – Print increased 13% . TMZ.com credited with breaking the news first jumped 750 rankings to 84, while perezhilton.com improved its ranking to 133, increases of 848.4% and 49.2% respectively in market share of visits by Australian Internet users on the same day. Michael Jackson's site www.michaeljackson.com, rocketed from a ranking of 73,911 to become the 134th most visited website in Australia on 26 June 2009.
Searches terms / phrases containing ‘michael jackson’ jumped from 296 during week ending 20 June 2009 to 8,569 during week ending 27 June 2009, indicating the breadth of information Australians wanted. Search queries included information about his songs, how he died, his children, his planned tour, pictures, his biography, video and lyrics (no doubt almost every cover band in the world played a Michael Jackson song over the weekend in tribute).
A total of 1,407 sites received traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009, up from 33 the week prior, notably Google News received a higher share of visits from these searches than the key News and Media – Print websites combined, providing it with the largest single day share of Internet Visits by Australian in the past three years.The leading websites receiving traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009 were;
The Angel
Leading to her death, Farah Fawcett one of the original Charlie’s Angels in the 70’s TV series of the same name and former Playboy Bunny was also the subject to media attention offline and online over the past weeks and months. This included the recent announcement of the intended marriage of Fawcett to long time beau Ryan O’Neal.Search activity for the term ‘farah fawcett’ increased 30x during the week ending 27 June, 2009 compared to the week prior and featured at number 4 in the fastest moving search terms last week. There were 76 search term variations relating to her name including playboy, movies, latest news, her son and cancer.
Google News and Wikipedia again became the focus of searchers over more traditional news sources such as the Australian newspapers websites, with some international websites also taking share away from local publishers.
The Hoax
While Jackson and Fawcett have been in the news for various reasons – Jackson for his anticipated London shows and Fawcett for her brave battle against cancer, Jeff Goldblum had no reason to be featuring prominently while reportedly on a film shoot in New Zealand.Goldblum’s death reportedly originated from the website FakeAWish.com. When a celebrity name is entered into the website, a news story is produced under a false news agency name ‘Global Associated News’.
The story caused search activity on Jeff Goldblum to increase 572 times in week ending 27 June 2009, 91% higher than searches on Farah Fawcett, but 75% less than Michael Jackson searches. Again Wikipedia and Google news were the prominent recipients of searches for ‘jeff goldblum’.
The three events last week had an interesting flow on effect, highlighting the online behaviour of Australian Internet users. Twitter and Google News had their largest single day share of visits propelled by the day’s news events.
Google News experienced a single day increase on 26 June 2009 of 93% and Twitter increased 13% as the news and tributes for Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett spread through the web and the hoax was uncovered.
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Digging Ads
Posted: 2009-06-22 08:05:02 UTC
On June 3 Digg.com has announced an upcoming pilot of an advertising platform, Digg Ads, which allows users to ‘digg’ an advertisement. This will move the ad up the page and lower the cost per click price paid by the advertiser. The alternative is that irrelevant ads will be buried and priced out of the system.
It’s an interesting take and could be regarded as behavioral based or socially influenced advertising. Digg should be be given credit for making a concerted effort to develop an advertising platform specific to their users and at the same time has the potential to increase the engagement opportunity for advertisers.
The success or otherwise of the program will be the willingness of Digg’s audience to interact with advertising in a similar way as they do with content. To get some perspective of whom the Digg audience are the following table reviews the Mosaic profiles indexed against the Australian Online Population for the 4 weeks ending June 13 2009.
The most over indexed group is ‘Suburban Subsistence’ which contains a strong skew in some subsets of 20-34 years olds and this borne out when reviewing age demographic results that highlight the 18-24 age groups as being the prominent audience and highest indexing age group.
Key attributes within ‘Suburban Subsistence’ include their confidence with technology and a social outlook, living in outer metropolitan and major regional suburbs, with an orientation towards coastal areas.
After ‘Suburban Subsistence’ the other Mosaic groups that over-index against the online population are the more predictable inner suburban and tech savvy “Young Ambition” and the “Metro Multiculture” groups.
It will be interesting to watch for any noticeable impacts on Digg’s audience as the program is piloted and introduced later in the year.
You can read more about the program on Digg’s Blog.
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Australia goes Bing
Posted: 2009-06-18 06:50:59 UTC
Last week I posted some initial stats around the launch of search engine challengers Wolfram Alpha and Bing. Today I am going to dig a little deeper into Bing’s launch in the Australian market. .
The chart below illustrates the movements in share of visits for key search engines excluding Google on a daily basis over the past month. Google continues to be the dominant search engine in Australia with the five Google search properties featuring in the top 10 being responsible for 87.1% of all visits to the category.
Since peaking on 3 June 2009 with 5.13% share of all visits to the Search Engine category, the share of visits to Bing declined - an expected trend after the initial spikes driven by curiosity and media coverage. Considering the ‘soft launch’ of Bing in Australia with no discernable marketing activity, the future still holds opportunity to access new audiences as features are added locally and marketing activity is implemented.
So what are people searching for on Bing?
The branded search term trends that we have seen over past years are also highlighted in Bing’s early results. Of the top 100 search terms for the four weeks ending 13 June 2009 (containing the first two weeks of search activity) 94% are brand related, comparatively Google Australia has 7 generic search terms in the top 100 search terms (93% brand related).
The table below illustrates the similarity between the top 10 search terms on Bing and Google Australia for the four weeks ending 13 June 2009.. The top 100 search terms account for 12.2% share of all search volume on Bing and 6.6% of Google Australia.
Bing’s top generic search term is ‘swine flu’ at number 38 with 0.8% share of searches, however the top generic term on Google Australia is ‘tv guide’ ranked at 28 with a 0.6% share of searches. The term ‘swine flu’ ranks at 71 on Google Australia with a share of 0.3% of searches.
The table below lists the top industries receiving traffic from Bing in Australia during the week ending 13 June 2009. The pattern between Bing’s downstream traffic and Google Australia’s is very similar.
Computers and Internet; Business and Finance; Entertainment; Shopping and Classifieds; and News and Media websites are receiving similar percentages of downstream traffic from both search engines. The largest difference is the volume of traffic from Bing to other search engines indicates that visitors have been sampling Bing and then returning to their default search engine. Google Australia was the top search engine to receive downstream traffic from Bing in week ending 13 June 2009 and the most searched for term since Bing was commissioned on 28 May 2009.
ninemsn properties (including Windows Live Mail, ninemsn News and ninemsn) appear in the Top 10 downstream traffic from Bing. However it seems the soft launch approach has put more dependence upon the ninemsn properties to generate discovery of Bing with ninemsn sites in the top 10 sites upstream delivering 53.7% of Bing’s visitors during week ending 13 June 2009.
We’ll continue to follow the search market, so follow us on Twitter to stay up to date. Over the coming days we’ll post similar analysis for New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore
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Wolfram Alpha and Bing initial Asia Pacific stats
Posted: 2009-06-11 07:23:26 UTC
Over recent weeks two new entrants have appeared on the search landscape globally. The uniquely named Wolframaplha (www.wolframalpha.com) and Microsoft’s new entry Bing (www.bing.com).
WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) made its public debut on 15 May, 2009 and Bing (www.bing.com) launched last week to much fanfare on 28 May. With a full week of data now available for Bing and 3 weeks of data for WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) it’s timely to look at the initial impact of these two important launches.
The chart below highlights the period since the WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) launch. Australian Internet users were the slowest to respond to the launch of the ‘computational knowledge engine’, but also represented the largest peak in visits amongst Asia Pacific markets on 19 May 2009, with 0.313% share of Australian visits to the Hitwise Search Engine category. New Zealand Internet users investigated WolframAlpha earlier on but did not reach the high peak in visits of Australian users, New Zealand visits to WolframAlpha accounted for 0.1622% of visits to the Search Engines category on 17 May 2009.
Singapore and Hong Kong peaked in tandem on 18 May with 0.1375% and 0.1326% share respectively of all Internet visits to Search Engines. In all Asia Pacific markets the initial interest in WolframAlpha declined and in now represents visits lower that 0.05% share.
Click on image to view larger chart.At the peak of interest Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com) ranked in the top 1,000 of all sites in each market;
• 163 in Australia (No.12 Search Engine),
• 360 (No. 25 Search Engine) in New Zealand,
• 624 (No. 31 Search Engine) in Singapore
• 833 (No.38 Search Engine) in Hong KongAfter Internet users initial curiosity satiated the rankings have slid in each market, most substantially in Hong Kong where on 7 June is ranked at 15,878 amongst all sites and 147 among Search Engines.
WolframAlpha by its very nature it will be a niche player, providing strong value to sectors of the online audience, particularly educational, technical and research- oriented industries.
Bing is Live
Bing (www.bing.com) is a different Search Engine all together. Launched on 28 May 2009 the replacement for Microsoft’s Live.com search engine has had an immediate impact. Positive media coverage and the seemingly endless desire for a strong search competitor to Google’s dominant position provided a strong base for the launch.
Click on image to view larger chart.Australia has reacted most positively of the Asia Pacific nations to the launch of Bing, peaking on 3 June 2009 with 5.13% share of all visits to the Search Engine category The combined total of Microsoft search properties accounted for 5.4% share of visits in the Search Engine category on 3 June 2009, representing a 23.4% increase on the same day in 2008.
Google properties dominated the Australian search landscape with 88.38% of visits during week ending 6 June 2009. The launch of Bing did not hurt Google’s share substantially with the monolith’s share decreasing 0.12% and Yahoo!7 Search declining 0.99% from the week prior to launch, week ending 23 May 2009.
New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong’s curiosity peaked on 2 June, a full week after launch, and saw the combined share of Live.com and Bing.com deliver increased share of the Search Engine category. Hong Kong increased 26%, Singapore 40% and New Zealand 29% when compared with the same day a year earlier (2 June 2008).
As of 6 June 2009 Bing is the fourth ranked search engine in Australia, after replacing Google Image Search for four days (2 June - 4 June, 2009) at number three, replacing Live.com in the rankings.In New Zealand Bing has taken over the fourth ranking position, formerly held by the very Search Engine it replaced, Live.com. A similar story is found in Hong Kong and Singapore where Bing is now the eight and fifth ranked search engine respectively replacing Live.com in the same positions.
The launch of Bing has created a greater opportunity for Microsoft to grow their share and develop a more substantial competitor to the dominant Google;, only time will tell whether the strategy and development of Bing will be a success.
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Oprah may be America’s Tweet-heart, but she doesn’t make the earth move Downunder!
Posted: 2009-04-27 01:16:59 UTC
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 versionIt 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.
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Online Boxing Day Retail Peaks
Posted: 2009-01-12 05:18:59 UTC
Boxing Day again delivered the highest volume of traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category in 2008. Compared to the previous year (Boxing Day 2007), market share of Australian Internet visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category increased by 6.19% on Boxing Day 2008.
Two sub-categories within Shopping and Classifieds saw Boxing Day become their number one online retail day for 2008.
On Boxing Day 2007 the Computers category experienced its 10th highest retail day, however on Boxing Day 2008 the category received its highest share of traffic for the year and increased its market share by 14.32%, compared to the previous year.
The Sport and Fitness category increased its market share on Boxing Day by an impressive 44.59% compared to the previous year.
On the flip side the Shopping and Classifieds – Automotive category experienced a decline of 6.99% on Boxing Day 2008 (68th highest day of traffic for 2008) compared to Boxing Day 2007 when it received its greatest share of traffic for the year. This is indicative of the general market slowdown facing the automotive industry.
The table below highlights further sub-categories of Shopping and Classifieds that shared Boxing Day as their number one retail day in 2008.
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