Hitwise Intelligence - Asia Pacific

New article, new blog - Australian Media Consumption

2011-09-14T04:08:32Z

The article Australian Media Consumption is available over on the new Marketing Forward Asia Pacific blog.

Australian Media Consumption In the last few weeks we’ve spent a lot of time in the media space, specifically the online media space: who is watching what and reading where. Usual suspects figure highly – News sites, Entertainment sites and even YouTube...more

Mortgages up, Home Loans and Credit Cards steady

2011-08-31T02:07:53Z

The recently released April-June Quarterly Banking Review (available for download) spotlights the habits of Australian consumers – not only are we saving more and paying down debt, but we're not thinking about new debt unless it’s a mortgage.

Searches for credit cards, home loans and mortgages all saw a drop across the quarter, with only Home Loans returning to levels of demand seen earlier in the year.

The variation here between ‘home loan’ and ‘mortgages’ is interesting too, stressing the difference that language
can make when it comes to sentiment – and how that sentiment translates to consumer demand.

In today's tight market, you might well see better returns marketing a mortgage today than you would a home loan. As seen in the charting however, this can change on a weekly basis.

Given this is all within just the Australian market, it’s easy to see the need to be well optimised for not only brand and product terms, but also generic terms, terms likely to be used by your potential customers as they search for you and your products.

For more Banking and Consumer insights, contact your Hitwise representative today.

Equally, if you’ve got a question you think we can answer, ask away and we’ll do our best to feature your queries where we can.

Experian Hitwise. Now you know.

The Winner of The Block

2011-08-18T19:14:19Z

Melbourne PR and Communications consultant Hamish Jones yesterday tweeted a question close to our hearts:Never watched an episode of #The Block. Are these odds likely to accurate reflect the results?

Not being home renovators was part of it, but in this case it was his query on the odds offered by Sportsbet.

Commercial odds are a form of predictive market, where the offerer is looking to offset risk as much as possible. Thus, as bets firm around a favourite, odds offered for that favourite decrease.

As you can see below, Josh and Jenna are Sportsbet's odds-on favourites.

Some back of the envelope figurings suggest they seem to be twice as likely to win as Rod & Tania, almost four times as likely as Polly& Waz and just under five times as likely to win as Katrina & Amie.

Given we haven’t watched The Block and aren’t privy to Sporsbet’s actuarial workings, we can't comment on their accuracy.

We do however have Search data, lots and lots of search data. Visualising this in the lead image (click for larger version) you start to see just how much interest there is in Josh and Jenna compared to everyone else. Don't read too much into Josh's slightly larger representation than Jenna's by the way - there's a lot of misspelling of Jenna.

Reviewing these variations analytically we see the following:

Going by public interest, Josh and Jenna are winners in the popularity stakes. However, they’re only just over twice as popular as Katrina and Amie. Rod & Tania / Polly & Waz also seem to have a better chance than the odds alone would suggest.

So, is the field tighter than it looks? Possibly, at least from the angle of public opinion.

In answering Hamish’s question, yes, the odds appear to braodly match the interest in the participants. We'll have to wait until Sunday to see if this translates into the highest sale price.

For more on predictive data, consumer insights and sentiment analysis, contact your Hitwise representative today.

Equally, if you’ve got a question you think we can answer, ask away and we’ll do our best to feature your queries where we can.

Experian Hitwise. Now you know.

NB Whilst Sportsbet are an Experian client, they have not been involved in the creation of this report. The odds used were publicly available at the time.

Addendum - 22/08/11There's a result that the data didn't cover - of the four properties, three failed to sell, with Polly and Waz subsequently winning by default. Congratulations!

Predicting Masterchef

2011-08-12T06:09:41Z

Predicting winners is big business, whether in business, at the track, or a punt between friends.

To quote the abstract of Prediction Markets in Theory and Practice by Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz, “market-generated forecasts typically outperform most moderately sophisticated benchmarks”.

In this case, the Australian public is the market, all those individuals curious enough to run searches in relation to the Masterchef.

My curiosity lead me to have a look at the data last Friday before the final – and I’m happy to say that between then and the Sunday night final, my prediction was heard by friends, family and everyone at the Saturday RMIT Masters of Designlecture: Kate to win.

How did I do it? Well, it’s more hypothesis than even theory at present, but it focuses on search habits over time.

Firstly, it’s important to establish that there has been consumer demand, as manifested by searches. There was, graphed below.

Separate to the prediction, it’s interesting to note the difference in this over the last three years, especially in light of David Mott’s commentary on differing audience numbers over the years, as 2011 interest seems to be down by 50-odd percent compared to 2010.

In this instance, (12 rolling weeks, to week ending 6 August 2011), Kate had almost 50% more searches than Michael. Given the Law of large numbers (the Hitwise sample size 3,000,000±) this isn’t an issue of who is saying what, but around the overall volume of individual searches. In this instance, Kate was winner, just as she was on Sunday night.

Could you have made a guess as to the winner without this information? Yes. Could you make a more educated guess with a higher degree of certainty thanks to this research? We think so.

For more on predictive data, consumer insights and sentiment analysis, contact Hitwise today.

Experian Hitwise. Now you know.

Huffpo Australia

2011-07-29T02:06:14Z

Announced recently at the Cannes Lions, the Huffington Post is soon to be launching an outpost in Australia.

This seemed a little strange to us here – Australia is small in comparison to the US, we have a range of media options available and have well resourced independent players. The recent launch of The Conversation adds further to the mix, providing a standalone platform for academic publishing.

Things started to make sense however when we took a look at HuffPo’s rankings – they’re number 1, and have been for every month bar two in the last year.

More incredibly, they’re seeing almost a million Australian visits a month: almost 5% of our population!

In this light the announcement doesn’t seem so strange after all — a cashed up offshore player (HuffPo was bought for US$315m by AOL earlier this year) has noted strong interest and decided to realise an opportunity for growth. In the three years to June 2011, HuffPo increased their Australian market share of the Lifestyle – Politics category from less than 5% to more than 20%. In fact, they're the single largest site in the category by visitation.

Having ranked ranked first in Lifestyle – Politics for ten out of the last twelve months, not to mention regularly pulling 900,000+ visits, Huffington Post is most definitely of interest to Australians, with us now of interest to AOL as a result.

Makes sense to us.

For information on how you can pick the right time to enter a new market, contact Experian Hitwise today.

Experian Hitwise. Now you know.

Australia's enthusiasm for the NBN

2011-07-18T09:27:35Z

Whilst the NBN contractual announcements of the other week were more than enough to send Twitter crazy , the consumer interest in all things high-speed from Australians is greater than it might seem.

Firstly, using Topsy’s Twitter analytics, we can quickly see the volume of interest driven by Telstra’s announcement of their agreement with NBN Co and the Federal Government.

Then, by building a panel of the key terms that drive traffic to the major Government sites, we can gain an understanding of exactly what Australian consumers are interested in, and how those interests change over time.

Firstly, whilst the NBN announcement was a pledge as part of the Kevin07 campaign, consumer interest really began in May 2008, when the then Rudd government announced a controversial 12 week, $5million tender.

NBN – Share of Users

Extended for 12 weeks after extensive appeal, consumer interest bubbled along throughout 2009-10.

Interest kicked up a gear in early to mid 2010, before going ballistic in the closing months, when Telstra backed the revised (and current) plan of building a government backed network. Whilst interest dropped slightly in the negotiation period since, search of late indicates a level of interest above and beyond anything we’ve seen before. The sustained search levels over the past fortnight suggest we’re all interested in high speed, low cost connections.

As an indication of how this interest shifted, we can look closely at the frequency of an individual search term, ‘nbn jobs’. Fourth most popular term of the week, it’s a search that Australians have conducted more frequency over time.

Having made only brief appearances prior, ‘nbn job’ related searches grow month on month, tracking at first behind and then overtaking general NBN searches in recent weeks.

In recent times operational and even commercial terms such as ‘rollout’ and pricing related searches have also taken shape.

From here we suggest search will shift towards more consumer oriented terms, with searches around specifications, pricing, faults and service coming to the fore.

With countries such as Japan and South Korea providing us hints of where connectivity could take us, Experian Hitwise will keep you up to date as Australia embraces its emerging NBN.

For more consumer insights, contact Experian Hitwise today.
Experian Hitwise. Now you know.

12 things you need to know about Facebook (Australia)

2010-10-13T07:18:27Z

While Sony Pictures are releasing the movie ‘The Social Network ‘in Australian cinemas on October 28 well behind the US and UK, I couldn’t resist providing some updated data around Facebook after seeing my colleague ,Robin Goad’s post yesterday.

For those curious about the film, The Social Network, here’s the lofficial trailer.

We’ll up the ante a little and deliver 12 insights around the Facebook phenomenon taken from the Australian Hitwise data set.

1. Facebook is the second most popular website visited by Australians after Google.com.au, accounting for 7.83% of all visits in the month of September 2010 but is the most popular website for Australian’s aged 18-24, with 8.97% of visits for the four weeks ending 2 October2010 just ahead of Google.com.au’s 8.96%.

2. Facebook’s share of page views represents almost 1 in 5 pages viewed by Australians during September 2010. Facebook’s 19.3% of all page views swamps Google.com.au’s 7.4% share of page views.

3. Facebook is clearly Australia’s most popular social network and reflects similar UK trends featured in Robin’s post. Facebook accounts for 56.8% of all visits to social networks in September 2010, being almost 3.8 times that of You Tube (15.1% share of visits).

4. Facebook Mobile (m.facebook.com) is the sixth most visited social network receiving 0.82% of all visits to social networks for the month of September 2010, indicating the growing use of mobile devices across Wi-Fi networks.

5. Facebook is the number one search term in each of the major search engines used by Australians – Google.com.au, Google.com, Bing.com and Yahoo! With variations of Facebook, including ‘face book’,’ facebook login’ and ‘fb’, search terms for Facebook accounted for 4.4% of all successful searches in the 4 weeks ending 2 October 2010.

6. Facebook received more traffic from Search Engines than any other website in the month of September 2010 receiving 9.6% of their traffic.

7. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook during September 2010 was 28 minutes and 58 seconds.

8. Over one in nine visits to all other websites directly after a visit to Facebook. Facebook accounts for 11.3% of all upstream traffic to other websites visited by Australian Internet users. This makes it the second largest source of traffic behind Google.com.au (31.7%) and well ahead of ninemsn that generates 3.8%.

9. Facebook’s share of Australian’s visits to all websites has increased 6-fold over the past three years and continues to capture more and more of Australian’s online focus , having increased its share of visits by 29.2% in the past year.

10. South Australian’s are the highest users of Facebook, when compared to the Australian online population, reflecting a 10% higher propensity to visit Facebook. NSW generates 32.1% of all Australian based visits to Facebook, on par with the online population profile.

11. A definite female skew exists of those Australian’s visiting Facebook. 55.8% are from Women and 44.2% from Men

12. Downstream traffic from Facebook to retail sites have increased 14.8% over the past year ,with Apparel and Accessories websites and Sport and Fitness websites, seeing the largest increases of 75.6% and 59.4% respectively.

Get connected with experian Hitwise via Twitter, Facebook and / or LinkedIn.

Private Shopping Clubs dominate Apparel Sites in Australia

2010-09-29T07:34:30Z

Apparel retailers in Australia have really embraced the online channel in the past few years, reflected by significant year on year growth of 49% in visits during August 2010. Other fast moving industries included; Appliances and Electronics (+26.7%), Computers (+18.2%), Rewards and Directories, which includes Comparison Shopping Sites (+13.1%), and House and Garden (+17.1%).

One interesting trend that has emerged from Christmas last year is the rise of online private shopping clubs – ozsale.com.au, brandsExclusive and buyinvite held the top 3 spots in the Apparel category between March 2010 and August 2010 (Alan first identified this trend here).

Private shopping clubs allow members to buy highly-discounted products from a range of brands at quick-fire sales events. They are an interesting e-commerce concept because we know that online communities and time-sensitive aggregators thrive on the Internet. Because they could work very well for a number of other retail categories, I looked at the downstream traffic from my Apparel Shopping Clubs custom category to gauge what other sectors might gain traction with consumers:

House and Garden, Health and Beauty and Sport and Fitness websites appear to get strong referrals from Apparel Shopping Clubs – which makes sense given they all have a skew in visits from female Internet users. There is potential opportunity for retailers or ‘retail aggregators’ to develop online private shopping clubs for dedicated age and lifestyle segments. It’s a space worth watching for all retail players.

This is my final post on the Hitwise Analyst Weblogs as I’ll be leaving Hitwise after 7+ years to embark on a PhD. It’s been a fun journey and a privilege to have contributed here - keep in touch.

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?

Connect with us via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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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Searches for Property for Sale and Credit Cards attract strong growth in NZ

2010-05-17T08:29:19Z

Following on from my post on Singapore financial search trends, we also looked at New Zealand queries to provide a reflection of economic conditions. We similarly found in NZ during Q1 2010 a rising trend for users to research a range of financial topics, including searching for properties to buy and rent, mortgages, credit cards, loans and savings.

* Property for sale searches (eg. ‘houses for sale’, ‘houses for sale auckland, ‘property for sale’) increased by 195.1% in the first quarter of the year compared to Q1 2009, and 53.4% up on Q42009.
* New Zealand locations that attracted significant year on year growth in property for sale searches included Auckland, Ashburton, Christchurch and Masterton, Rodney District and One Tree Hill.
* Searches for mortgages were down on last year by 7.3%, though have shown recovery with an 23.5% increase through Q1 since Q4 2009.

* Property for rent searches (eg. Variations of ‘houses for rent’, ‘holiday homes for rent’, ‘properties for rent’) increased by 130.5% in the first quarter of the year compared to Q1 2009 and 66.5% over the quarter.
*Trade Me homes for rent’ was the fastest moving rental search term year on year, highlighting the strength of the auction site outside of retail. Fast moving locations for rentals included, Auckland, Manurewa, Oamaru, as well as overseas interest in Melbourne.

*Searches for loans increased steadily by 48.8% year on year, and 31.5% over the quarter. Student loan queries dominated the top loan searches, accounting for 4 out of the top 10.

*Searches for credit cards increased by 150.1% over the year compared to Q12009.
* Driven by branded search, with ‘global plus credit card’, the most searched for credit card term, experiencing 26.9% more searches than last March. Other leading branded terms in order of popularity included, ‘kiwibank credit card’, ‘bnz credit cards’, ‘warehouse credit card’, ‘bnz credit card’, and ‘asb credit card’.
*Searches for ‘credit card balance transfer’, ‘low interest credit card’, ‘credit card fees’, were prominent generic searches as consumers tried to transfer and manage their debts.

*Searches for savings increased by 85.3% over the year, and increased by 47.5% over the quarter as consumers remained fiscally cautious.

Property searches attracting the highest growth amongst finance queries in Singapore

2010-05-14T02:42:03Z

Recently we analysed the online financial behaviour of Singapore Internet users, and found an increase during the first quarter of 2010 in search queries around financial needs, including searching for properties to buy and to rent, mortgages, loans, savings and credit cards.

In particular we found strong growth in property searches for sale and rent in Singapore reflecting high property demand and price growth. Interest in the stock market, reflected by search behaviour, cooled in comparison to the property market.

Here were our financial search portfolios comparing Q1 of 2010 to the same time last year:

Source: Experian Hitwise

* Property for sale searches (eg. ‘properties for sale in singapore’, ‘house for sale in singapore’) increased by 407% in the first quarter of the year compared to Q1 2009, 183.1% up on Q42009.
* A peak in property for sale searches in early March 2010 reflects expected new price highs in 2010.
* Searches for mortgages were up by 164.8% year on year, and increased 14% over the quarter.
* Property for rent searches (eg. Variations of ‘houses for rent in singapore’, ‘property for rent in singapore’) increased by 428.2% in the first quarter of the year compared to Q1 2009 and 51.5% over the quarter.
* Searches for loans increased by 239.1% year on year, and increased 68.2% over the quarterly. ‘Personal loan’ and ‘housing loan’ were the two most popular search terms.

* Credit Card searches increased by 225% over the year compared to Q12009.
* Branded credit card search terms dominated the leading queries, including, ‘citibank credit card’, ‘uob credit card, ‘ocbc credit card’, ‘dbs credit card’ and ‘hsbc credit card’.
* Searches for credit card promotions were amongst the top queries, such as ‘uob credit card promotion’, as Singapore consumers shopped around for the best deals.

* Searches for savings increased by 267.3% over the year, and increased by 39.5% over the quarter, indicating that Singaporeans remained cautious overall about their finances.
* Stocks, Shares and Bonds related queries were up 40.7% year on year, but down 16.9% as the property market gained the interest of investors.

Singapore: Social Networks continue to trump Search Engines

2010-04-29T08:39:28Z

Having recently re-located to KL, Malaysia, I thought it timely to provide an update on the nearest market we’re tracking here, Singapore. Unsurprisingly, Social Networking and Forums was the most popular online industry visited by Singapore Internet users in March 2010. What’s of interest is that this has consistently been the case since September 2007. Contrast that to Australia, where Social Networking and Forums overtook Search Engines for monthly visits only during March this year. Visits to Social Networking websites by Singaporeans is therefore a deeply embedded component of Internet usage and has been for a decent amount of time.

Singaporean Internet use is dominated overall by web-based activities (i.e. navigation, communication, and publishing) reflected by the prominence of Search Engines, Portal FrontPages, Email Services and Blogs. Stocks and Shares was the only ‘commercial’ sector amongst the top 10 industries. Multimedia, Games, Software and Reference sites were also amongst the top 10, highlighting a strong learning-orientation to web use.

While Social Networking and Forums has been dominant for some time, it is still growing at a strong rate, moving 2.74 percentage points, or 24% year on year (see below table). Travel sectors have also been growing strongly, including Maps (27%), Transport (13%) and Commercial Airlines (20%). The debut of Google Maps Singapore in November 2009 significantly contributed to growth in Travel – Maps visits, while in the Airlines sector, visits to Tiger Airways, Jetstar Airways and Air Asia all grew by 29.5%, 10.7% and 17% respectively.

Facebook’s phenomenal global growth has not left Singapore untouched, attracting the highest growth in visits amongst all websites. Twitter notably was amongst the top 10 fast moving websites, growing at a faster rate than its predecssor, Plurk. Amongst Singaporean websites, inSing.com, a lifestyle, entertainment, business and shopping channel, grew at the fastest rate, debuting in April 2009. Both Google Singapore and Bing notably gained strong traction.

While it’s illustrative to gain an overall sense of fast moving industries and websites, I’ll be spending more time over the coming months examining a range of commercial and lifestyle industries in more detail in Singapore and Hong Kong. Feel free to post any topic requests in the comments section.