Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

SOPA and PIPA: 10 Key Stats to Consider

2012-01-18T22:30:35Z

According to Politico, approximately 7,000 sites are taking part in today’s protest against the House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Sites including Wikipedia and Craigslist have “gone black” in protest and to raise awareness of these acts. Rather than a traditional “Google Doodle” for the Google logo, Google covered its logo in black and clicking on the image redirects users to a page where they can learn about SOPA and PIPA, and choose to contact Congress or disseminate information through social networks.

Ten statistics worth noting:

1. Wikipedia is the 15th largest website in the US, capturing 14 million visits a day.

2. There are some jokes about “kids today” using Wikipedia for research rather than physical books. With that in mind, it may surprise people to know that the 18-24 age group actually under-indexes for visits to Wikipedia. The site’s traffic share by income group aligns with the distribution of online population.

3. Craigslist’s parent site captures 4 million visits a day. All told, Craigslist properties combined capture 47 million visits a day – meaning almost 50 million visits will be impacted by Craigslist going dark, although there is a link on the page to continue to the normal website.

4. In fact, the search term “Craigslist” produces the third most traffic in the US.

5. Wikipedia is a top recipient of searches for presidential candidates’ names.

6. The audience for Change.org, a site which encourages social enterprise site which allows users to create petitions, skews towards the least and one of the most affluent income groups.

7. Entertainment and Media categories are some of the top recipients of Wikipedia traffic; the Federal Government category comes in 12th.

8. Wikipedia ranks as the 4th largest recipient of Search traffic.

9. Reddit, a news aggregator which has gone dark today, drives much of its traffic to Entertainment and Media categories, impacting websites that rely on Reddit's referrals.

10. Searches for variations of SOPA and PIPA were (day of 1/16/12) driving about half as much search traffic as searches for variations of “Kim Kardashian”. To put that into perspective, searches for Ms. Kardashian drive 6 times more traffic than searches for President Obama.

The impact of today’s protests on web behaviors promises to be considerable. We will follow-up with information about today’s traffic to petitions and government sites, along with search trends.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst with the Strategic Services group for today's analysis.

Post Holiday Traffic Boom

2011-12-29T17:02:44Z

After a strong start over the Thanksgiving weekend, the traffic to the top 500 retail websites continue to increase every week throughout the 2011 holiday season as compared to last year.

The highest increases year-over-year for daily traffic took place on the day after Christmas where traffic was up 31% over last year and Cyber Monday where traffic was up 29%. Total visits reached the highest level of the holiday season on Cyber Monday this year, displacing Black Friday.

One driver of post Christmas traffic is always shoppers seeking out after Christmas sales & discounts, especially among those that received gift cards. If search behavior is any indicator, there were plenty of gift card buyers out there and along with recipients looking for ways to spend them. Early predictions from the NRF’s 2011 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, expected holiday shoppers to spend an average of $155.43 on gift cards, the highest amount since 2007 and up from $145.61 last year. Search queries that included variations of ‘gift card’ started to increase the week before Thanksgiving and continued to grow each week. Last week, the share of search clicks that included ‘gift card’ increased 32% over the same week last year.

Last week the top search query to include ‘gift card’ was ‘kindle gift card’, most likely a companion gift to the many Kindles given as gifts this holiday season. Versatile, broad usage gift cards like the American Express gift card and Visa gift card were also among the top variations along with iTunes, another holiday favorite. Shoppers may have also been using their gift cards to purchase holiday gifts with two appearances of ‘balance’ in the top 10 variations.

Pinteresting Trend in Social Media

2011-12-22T15:42:33Z

The social media space continues to evolve. Pinterest, a site launched in March 2010 that describes itself as an online pinboard to organize and share things you love, recently emerged as one of the top 10 websites within the Hitwise Social Networking & Forums category. The invitation only site received nearly 11 million total visits during the week ending December 17, 2011, almost 40 times the number of total visits versus just six months ago (week ending June 18, 2011).

Pinterest content has something for everyone, but the site is dominated by images featuring home décor, crafts, fashion, and food. Not surprisingly, visitors to the site in the 12 rolling weeks ending December 17th skewed female (58%) and between the ages of 25 and 44 (59%). Pinterest and the Social Networking & Forums category both receive their highest share of visits from California and Texas. However, the Social Networking category as a whole over-indexes on share of visits from Northeastern states while Pinterest over-indexes on visits from the states in the Northwest and Southeast. This data indicates that Pinterest visitors have a different profile versus their counterparts visiting other social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

In fact, nine of the top ten over-indexed states for Pinterest visitors also over-index for the Hobbies and Crafts category (versus the online population) which is expected given the abundance of crafts content on the website. When comparing the Mosaic USA 2011 types that visit both Pinterest.com and Hobbies and Crafts websites during the 12 weeks ending December 17, 2011, the data shows that Boomers and Boomerangs are the group most likely to visit, particularly the Pinterest website (comprising over 10% of visits). This group of consumers is characterized as baby boomers and young adults who are heavy web users who spend time on house and garden, sports and fitness, and family-oriented websites. This information is useful to companies who wish to target their content to be “pinned” by Pinterest users.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today's analysis.

Napster’s Final Days Drive Visits to the Website

2011-12-16T20:47:07Z

Napster, the free peer-to-peer file sharing service which launched in 1999 and largely created the peer-to-peer music file sharing craze of the last decade, was recently acquired by online music subscription service Rhapsody. The acquisition was announced in early October and became official on November 30th, 2011.

The result of the acquisition is the end of Napster. Weekly market share data shows that Napster, when compared with the Music (Shopping & Classifieds) category, received a 66% smaller market share of traffic during the same week last year and the site consistently received a smaller share of traffic throughout the year as compared with the Music category. However, the data from the week ending December 10, 2011 shows that visits to Napster nearly tripled from the previous week and slightly surpassed market share for the Music category. Whether driven by nostalgia or curiosity, Hitwise data seems to show that Rhapsody is seeing a short term boost in traffic from a new-to-Rhapsody demographic as a result of the integration. Data from the 12 rolling weeks ending December 10, 2011 shows that visitors to Rhapsody skew younger (18-34) and less affluent (60% of visits from household incomes less than $60k) as compared with visitors to Napster. These data insights show that the Napster acquisition was well-publicized and brought about renewed interest in the brand among older, more affluent online users; an attractive customer for the Rhapsody service.

With the week ending November 19th, 2011 “Napster” emerged as a popular search term driving traffic to Rhapsody.com, and peaked the week ending December 3rd which coincided with the official website merger. The most recent week of data (12/10/2011) shows that Rhapsody paid for 92% of the “Napster” search term traffic.

Online users who visit the Napster.com homepage are currently informed about the merger and are shown a link for a free 14 day trial of Rhapsody. Daily data shows that traffic from Napster.com to Rhapsody.com nearly tripled on November 30th, the day the merger took effect, as compared with the previous day. In terms of the websites visited before Rhapsody.com that are bringing new visitors to the site, Napster.com and Music.Napster.com emerged as the third and tenth most popular websites referring new visitor traffic the week ending December 10, 2011. This represents a drastic increase in new referred traffic when compared to the week ending October 8, 2011, the week the acquisition was made public.

Box Office Gross Synchs with Online Behaviors

2011-12-15T20:29:43Z

Following a strong Thanksgiving, last week’s US box office take was the second softest of any this year. Online interest in new releases is tracking with their offline performance and traffic to Fandango is closely trending with the overall box office gross. The correlation between box office performance and Fandango’s market share suggests that traffic to the movie information and ticketing site can be an early indicator of movies’ sales numbers.

*Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com

The holiday season had a strong start, with Fandango’s market share of visits up 5% for the week of Thanksgiving 2011 over the week of Thanksgiving 2010; this performance is in line with a 5% bump in total US box office sales for the top twelve grossing pictures for Thanksgiving 2011 vs. 2010. The post-Thanksgiving picture was less encouraging where both box office revenues and Fandango’s market share declined.

Though box office and online interest may have slackened, there’s potential for a rebound for additional holiday releases with films like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mission: Impossible, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin and Sherlock Holmes gaining traction online ahead of their release dates.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst with the Strategic Services group for today's analysis.

Luxury Brand Report Studies New Online Trends

2011-12-09T19:20:42Z

Every day, Experian Hitwise clients discover new trends and opportunities from our timely, insightful online consumer behavior database. We are happy to share these insights by having clients post their findings on this blog and today present analysis on the luxury retail market from PM Digital Research.

Despite ongoing volatility in the stock market and global economies, consumers are once again paying for luxury items, even as some brands raise prices. Some 2011 forecasts indicate that global sales of luxury goods will grow 8% or more this year.

To better assess this renewed interest and activity for luxury brands, PM Digital recently released Trend Report: Luxury Brands Online. Leveraging data sourced from Experian Hitwise, as well as independent work undertaken by PM Digital Research, our latest study shows a shifting landscape as luxury e-commerce growth continues.

Below are a few highlights from the 2011 study:

- The ten largest luxury brands captured almost 90% online market share, based on total visits to 42 luxury brand sites studied for the report. These include iconic brands Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, and Gucci, which attract a wide audience of aspirational Internet browsers as well as core buyers.

- Most luxury brand websites support e-commerce, and online traffic favors them. Only 19% (1 in 5) of the luxury brands studied do not have online stores; they get just 2% of total visits.

- Search engines dominate as a source of traffic to luxury brand sites, accounting for one-third of all referrals. The second largest source of traffic comes from shopping sites (e.g. department store sites). There is very little cross-visiting from other luxury brands (just 2%) indicating a critical loyalty at the individual brand level.

- Luxury brands saw a larger share of visits from search (31%) than Apparel & Accessories sites in general (27%), but with a smaller paid search ratio. Organic traffic dominates, and some luxury brands still have no paid search strategies. Hermès and Ralph Lauren are notable exceptions (both are 55% paid).

- Shoes, handbags and accessories are driving more search clicks for luxury brands than apparel. Shirts are the top clothing keyword (driven by Ralph Lauren’s many clicks from polo shirts), followed by dresses.

- Social media accounts for nearly 10% of traffic to the luxury category. Facebook is the most significant player, with its share ranging from 4% to 10%. Facebook “like” counts for luxury brands have seen tremendous growth over the past year, with most brands more than doubling. Dior “likes” grew over 1,000%.

Overall, the study finds that successful luxury brands are striving to provide consumers with a consistent brand image across channels. Supported by engaging content, video and events, luxury brands can capture a real-time experience, unlike that of offline media, and drive sales demand within a consumer’s shopping event.

To download a complete copy of the 2011 Trend Report for Luxury Brands Online, click here.

Job Search Websites Visits Eclipse Unemployment Websites

2011-12-07T19:04:28Z

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the US Unemployment rate just has dropped to 8.6%, the lowest rate since March 2009. Similarly, the market share of visits to state and informational websites about unemployment decreased 18% year over year while visits to job search websites are up 9% during the same time period. Some of the waning visits to unemployment websites may be attributed to the jobless where unemployment benefits have expired and the uptick in visits to job search websites highlights that there are plenty of job seekers out there.

In comparing the search terms driving traffic to unemployment websites year over year, the term “unemployment benefits” experienced a 25% increase in search clicks. Online users are still heavily searching for unemployment benefits by state, in particular Ohio and New York. Georgia and Florida also appeared in the top searches related to unemployment, two states with rates above the national unemployment rate.

When comparing the visitors of employment websites with unemployment websites, “Hope for Tomorrow” was the Mosaic 2011 Type that over-indexed against the online population for visiting the websites of unemployment websites as well as employment listings. Using Experian Mosaic Lifestyle segmentation, a household-based consumer lifestyle segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into unique segments, we can understand a more robust view of online consumers who are visiting these websites, including their preferences and habits. For example, the “Hope for Tomorrow” Mosaic Type is characterized as young, single parents living modest lifestyles in smaller cities. Likewise, “Meager Metro Means” and “Rolling the Dice” are also most likely to be visiting both employment and unemployment websites; both groups are described as lower educated urban dwellers with low incomes.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today's analysis.

Layaway on Online Users’ Holiday Wishlist

2011-12-06T22:24:27Z

The holiday season is fast approaching and there are numerous commercials heavily promoting layaway as an option for consumers. The share of searches for the portfolio of retail-related layaway terms peaked much earlier, the week ending October 22, 2011 and was up 121% from the previous years’ peak in layaway terms which occurred the week ending November 27, 2010. This earlier activity is due to heavy advertising campaigns by major retailers to promote layaway options for the holiday season.

Custom analysis of those searching for “layaway” terms during the 12 weeks ending November 12th revealed that 63% of these online users have a VantageScore of D or F, indicating they are not a credit-worthy group of consumers. They are also most likely to be between the ages of 18 – 34 (64%), female (59%) and, compared with the general online population, over index on living in Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Kmart and Wal-Mart, two retailers which are heavily advertising layaway via television ads, are the top recipients of traffic from layaway search terms for the most recent 12 rolling week period (December 3, 2011). Kmart is paying for nearly half of these search clicks, while all of Wal-Mart’s search traffic is driven by organic clicks. Overall, the volume of search clicks to Wal-Mart from layaway terms increased nearly 30 times year over year and five of the top ten layaway search terms include variations of Wal-Mart.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today's analysis.

Retail traffic on Cyber Monday up 29%

2011-11-30T20:34:12Z

On the heels of a very successful Black Friday, holiday shopping trends continue on an upward trajectory. On Cyber Monday, November 28th, total US visits to the Top 500 Retail websites increased 29% on Cyber Monday as compared to 2010 with more than 177 million US visits. The day before Cyber Monday also showed significant growth over last year with an increase of 14%. Overall, traffic has increased every day over the past week with only one exception, Saturday, Nov. 26th.

Among the categories driving the growth in traffic on Cyber Monday were Department stores (e.g. Amazon and Wal-Mart) Rewards & Directories, Apparel & Accessories, Appliances & Electronics (e.g. Best Buy) and Video & Games (e.g. Game Stop). All the categories saw double-digit growth on Cyber Monday 2011 vs. 2010.

Below is a list of the top visited retail sites on Cyber Monday:

All of the major retail websites experienced double-digit growth on Cyber Monday, including the top 10 sites. In fact, digging further into data shows that 91 of the top 100 sites (or 172 sites out of top 200) retail sites saw year-over-year traffic increases on Cyber Monday 2011 vs. 2010.

Our previous analysis is here for: Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Retail traffic on Black Friday up 2%

2011-11-27T00:43:57Z

Total US visits to the top 500 Retail websites increased 2% on Black Friday as compared to 2010 and received more than 173 million US visits. Traffic has increased each day leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday and the total visits dipped slightly (-1%) on Black Friday compared Thanksgiving Day 2011. Early Black Friday sales resulted in a shift of online traffic, which climbed prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, however, continued heavy promotional activity helped to drive significant online traffic on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday. While Black Friday has been the top day for online retail traffic over the past two years, warm weather and early store openings encouraged shoppers to go online sooner this season.

Among the categories driving the growth in traffic on Black Friday were Department Stores (e.g. Amazon and Wal-Mart) Apparel & Accessories, Appliances & Electronics (e.g. Best Buy) and Video & Games (e.g. Game Stop).

Below is a list of the top visited retail sites on Black Friday:

Many of the major retail websites experienced growth on Black Friday, including Amazon, Best Buy, JC Penney, Sears and Kohl’s. Amazon.com was the most visited website on Black Friday for the 7th year in a row.

Retail traffic on Thanksgiving Day up 9%

2011-11-26T16:40:01Z

Total US visits to the top 500 Retail websites increased 9% on Thanksgiving as compared to 2010 and received more than 176 million US visits. Traffic increased each day leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday and the total visits jumped 57% on Thanksgiving Day from the previous day, Nov. 23, 2011.

Among the categories driving the growth in traffic on Thanksgiving Day were Department stores (e.g. Amazon and Wal-Mart) and Appliances & Electronics (e.g. Best Buy) and Video & Games (e.g. Game Stop).

Below is a list of the top visited retail sites on Thanksgiving Day:

Many of the major retail websites experienced growth on Thanksgiving Day, including Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy, and Kohl’s. Walmart.com was the most visited website on Thanksgiving for the 7th year in a row.

Our Black Friday data will be out later today, the top day for retail traffic for the past two years. We’ll see if the offline madness also translated to online visits.

Pre-Black Friday retail traffic up 6%

2011-11-23T19:17:48Z

Total US online visits to the top 500 retail sites are up 6% last week compared to same time last year. The custom category of 500 retail sites received 607 million total US visits last week and recorded its’ 3rd straight week of growth heading into the Peak Week of online retail traffic. This growth is consistent with what we reported back in October.

We previously noted that the anticipation of Black Friday has been building as Black Friday-related searches were up 17% two weeks ago as compared to the previous year and 154% from the previous week. All of this is good news for retailers as many have been offering their Black Friday deals earlier this week as some shoppers recently told The New York Times that they were tired with waking up early to find stores packed full of people and out-of-stock on the best deals.

Among the categories driving this growth in traffic are Department stores (e.g. Amazon and Wal-Mart) and House & Garden (e.g. Home Depot and Pottery barn).

Below is a list of the top visited retail sites for last week:

It will be interesting to see how this year’s surge of “Christmas Creep” will affect consumer behavior online. Black Friday has been the top visited day among retails sites for the last two years and Thanksgiving Day has traditionally been a heavy online retail day in years past.

Occupy Wall Street Sites Win Diverse Audience

2011-11-23T16:29:42Z

As the Occupy movement passed its two month anniversary last week, Occupy-related sites (e.g occupywallstreet.org) experienced a resurgence in market share of visits.

The initial peak in searches for variations of “occupy” and traffic to Occupy-related sites occurred in the first two weeks of October, as web-users sought general information about Occupy protests, the movement’s demands and associated celebrities. The subsequent decline in traffic and searches indicated that general interest in the movement was waning. However, New York’s temporary clearing of Zuccotti Park, and the occasion of the two month anniversary’s “day of action” leading to numerous major events piqued interest in the movement once again.

The psychographic profile of the visitors to the Occupy sites highlights the diversity of those concerned with the movement across economic, geographic and age groups. Using Experian Mosaic Lifestyle segmentation, a household-based consumer lifestyle segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into unique segments, we can understand a more robust view of the visitors, including their preferences and habits. “Jet Set Urbanites” accounted for the highest share of visits to the category and the category over-indexes the most in visit share from this Mosaic Type against the online population; this group tends to be highly affluent, progressive and to live in major metropolitan areas. Given the protests which have popped up on college campuses, it’s no surprise to see the category over-indexing in visit share from the “Colleges and Cafes” Mosaic Type. On the other side of the spectrum, the category captured a high share of visits from “Small Town Shallow Pockets” – which skews older, towards those living in exurban small towns and represents one of the least affluent psychographic segments.

The movement’s relevancy to web-users is dependent on major, newsworthy events, rather than an organically sustained interest. But, at these critical junctures, it is worth noting that OWS successfully captures the attention of a broad swath of the US online population, not just a particular segment.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst on the Custom Data & Insights team for today's analysis.

Procrastinators Gobble Up Thanksgiving Recipes

2011-11-22T15:02:35Z

Thanksgiving is only a few days away and aspiring chefs are hungrily searching online for holiday recipes. Searches for Thanksgiving and turkey recipes traditionally peak the week of Thanksgiving, indicating that recipe searchers procrastinate and wait until the last minute before planning their feast.

Traffic during the 2011 holiday season shows that searches on “Thanksgiving recipes” are primarily driving clicks to FoodNetwork.com, AllRecipes.com, and TasteofHome.com, all of which received a higher share of traffic from the search term as compared with 2010. The websites of CPG companies such as McCormick, Hidden Valley, Betty Crocker, and Kraft Foods have also experienced gains in traffic from searches on ‘thanksgiving recipes’ year over year, most notably from use of paid search.

Despite the fact that search term variation “healthy Thanksgiving recipes” nearly tripled year over year, the general trend shows that there are more variations for “deep fried turkey” and “turducken” (which consists of a chicken stuffed into a duck, which is stuffed into a turkey) , although there were a higher number of these search term variations last year.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Custom Data & Analysis team, for today's iPhone analysis.

Black Friday Anticipation Builds

2011-11-18T20:09:15Z

Black Friday is almost upon us and the outlook is looking good for a positive start to the holiday season. The NRF predicts that 152 million people will shop over Black Friday weekend, up 10% from last year – a conservative estimate based upon the actual 212 million shoppers that actually appeared in retail stores. Some of this shopping activity may be bolstered by the bevy of retail stores that are opening earlier than any previous holiday seasons despite some pushback from both employees and consumers. Online indicators also point to growing interest with Black Friday-related searches up 17% last week as compared to the previous year and 154% from the previous week.

Traffic to websites dedicated to Black Friday information, such as BlackFriday.info and BFads.net, also increased 15% year-over-year. These websites capture a significant share of Black Friday-related searches; however, there is significant anticipation each year around the release of promotions from specific retailers, whose brand names appear frequently in Black Friday-related searches. Wal-mart is the retailers to appear most frequently, which has also translated into Walmart.com directly capturing a higher share of Black Friday searches. For the 4 weeks ending November 12, 2011, Walmart.com received 10% of Black Friday-related terms, up 9 percentage points from the same time frame last year.

The impact of Wal-mart’s Black Friday sale is also key to driving traffic to the Black Friday websites, where traffic jumped 152% from the previous day when Wal-Mart released information about Black Friday promotions on November 10th. Total visits to Walmart.com also increased 15% on November 10th as compared to the previous day.