Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

Baby Names and More Fun to Come

2007-08-27T13:35:33Z

The question of baby names and baby kit has become surprisingly relevant to me in recent months. In this, my last post before my maternity leave, I wanted to share some data and insights on baby related searches. After "bmi baby" the top UK search term to include the word "baby" in the past four weeks was "baby names". The following table lists the most popular searches that include the word "baby names".

As you can see, UK Internet searches for "unusual baby names" are not so unusual - and in fact have been increasing in the past year, up 28%. My friends all seem to be having girls, and the data indicates I am not alone. There was a 258% year on year increase in share of UK Internet searches for "baby girls names" but only an 84% increase for "baby boy names".

The most searched for baby kit is clothes, walkers, monitors, car seats and prams. My decision to get a Bugaboo seems to be vindicated by the search data, as searches for "bugaboo" outpaced all other pram manufacturers last week, save Graco. But, further checking revealed that Graco's brand is much more closely associated with car seats than prams (as indicated by our Search Term Suggestion Report).

Our baby is due Saturday so this will be my last post for the next few months. If you are hungry for UK data, be sure to read Robin Goad's blog and our Hitwise To Go posts.

Be well and see you in a few months.

MySpace and Bebo Replace Searches for Chat Rooms

2007-08-22T12:27:15Z

I mentioned last week that we are working on some analysis for a report on how consumer search behaviour has changed over the past couple of years. Given the interest in the YouTube-Funny Videos post, I thought I'd share another example.

We found a strong negative correlation between the weekly share of UK Internet searches for "myspace" and "bebo" with "chat rooms" and "free chat rooms" over the past two years. The charts below illustrate this nicely.

One of our readers pointed out that correlation does not equal causation. True and thanks for pointing that out. It does seem howver that as consumers have figured out where to find hang out and chat online, they changed the language of their search queries to navigate to specific social networks. Stay tuned for more results from the analysis.

Xbox 360 Price Cut - Updated on Console Wars

2007-08-21T10:46:20Z

According to Stephen McGill, head of gambling and entertainment for Xbox UK, the "Xbox 360 is uniquely placed to take the UK by storm this Christmas". After yesterday's announcement of a price cut for the gaming console, we thought it high time to update our statistics on searches for gaming consoles.

Last week, the Nintendo Wii was the most searched for gaming console in the UK, with share of UK Internet searches for "nintendo wii" 49% higher than "xbox 360". However, the Wii's position is not unchallenged. Two weeks ago, the Nintendo DS held the top spot and in mid-June the Xbox 360 was in first place. This makes the UK market, at least measured by Internet searches, much flatter than the US market, where the Wii has dominated since its launch.

So what impact will yesterday's price cut have on the Xbox? Internet searches are often a leading indicator of interest and so we will watch this closely. We update our search data weekly, so we'll post updated search statistics next week. In the meantime, I can tell you that enthusiasm seems a bit muted. The top website to receive UK Internet visits from searches for "xbox 360" is www.xbox.com. Based on daily data, the website didn't get a lift yesterday on the news. We will post an update next week to see whether as the news filters out enthusiasm grows.

YouTube Replace Searches for Funny Videos

2007-08-17T11:16:45Z

We are working on some analysis for a report on how consumer search behaviour has changed over the past couple of years and I wanted to share a fun bit of data that we found. Analysis of search term content, or the words that consumers use when they do internet searches, has seen some pretty interesting changes over the past two years. An obvious shift has been the rise of social media brands.

For example, we found a strong negative correlation between the weekly share of UK Internet searches for "youtube" and "funny videos" over the past two years. UK Internet searches for funny videos started to pick up just before YouTube devleoped much brand recognition in February and March 2006. Once YouTube started to take off, we saw a precipitous decline in UK internet searches for "funny videos" as illustrated in the chart below.

As consumers figured out where to find funny videos online, they changed the language of their search queries to navigate to the YouTube website. Stay tuned for more results from the analysis.

Market Turmoil Leads Consumers Online but Punters More Interested in Big Brother

2007-08-14T07:00:39Z

Friday the markets went crazy. Now that things are calming down (at least they seem to be) I wanted to look at what impact the turmoil had on UK consumer behaviour online. Friday (10th August) was the busiest day since Budget Day (21st March) for Business Information and Stocks and Shares websites. UK Internet visits to Business Information websites were up 11% Friday compared to Thursday and visits to Stocks and Shares websites were up 13%.

Yahoo! and MSN saw more of their portal traffic divert to their finance sections on Friday as UK consumers clicked through for market updates. UK Internet visits to Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance were up 19% Friday and MSN Money UK's Internet visits were up 9%. Other fast movers were FT.com with UK Internet visits up 24% and Fool.co.uk up 11%. UK consumers were also searching for information on the markets with the number of search terms that included the words "share price" up 14% last week, "ftse" up 21% and "ftse 100" up 217%.

News and Media traffic also surged but when I looked at the data, the increase appears to be on the back of fantasy football, big brother and other news events rather than the market turmoil. The highest volume non-branded search terms sending visits to News and Media websites last week were "weather forecast", "big brother", "uk weather" and searches for Formula 1 driver "lewis hamilton". Among the highest volume queries, those that saw an increase last week were "lewis Hamilton" up 83% and "madeleine mccann" up 127%.

In fact, whilst bankers were cutting holidays short in response to the market turmoil, our data shows that punters are more interested in Big Brother and Fantasy Football. Last week, the volume of UK internet searches for "big brother" was 49 times higher the volume of searches for "ftse" and searches for "fantasy football" were 10 times higher. In fact, hype around the Premier League and offline promotion of fantasy football caused UK Internet searches for "fantasy football" to soar to their highest level in two years.

Consumer confidence doesn't seem to have been affected by the markets just yet...

How to Write a CV and Other Burning Questions

2007-08-06T14:10:28Z

Last week, Bill Tancer (GM of Research for Hitwise US) wrote a brilliant column for Time.com about US search queries that include the words "how to". While Americans are fiddling with their neckties, Brits are brushing up their CVs, firming and toning and as with the US, teenagers (educated guess) are looking for advice on other diversions.

In the four weeks to 4th August 2007 there were 33,270 unique search queries containing the words "how to", and a look at the most popular questions asked paints an interesting picture of modern Britain. Essentially, we want to become rich ("write a CV", "make money") and attractive ("lose weight", "get a six pack", "get rid of spots") in order to procreate ("kiss", "snog", "have sex", "get pregnant").

Top 10 search terms based on share of UK Internet searches that include the words "how to": Four weeks to 4th August 2007

The query "how to write a cv" has held the #1 spot for most of the past year. There was a brief spell in late March / early April when searches for "how to save a life lyrics" took the top spot but it quickly sank down again. (In case your memory is as terrible as mine... that was a song from The Frays that was featured on Greys Anatomy and Scrubs).

You may also notice in the table above a column titled "Success Rate". I chuckled when I saw that "how to make money" has the lowest Success Rate at only 59%. This is not however an indicator of the quality of information or advice one receives. Success Rate in this case refers to a successful search - one in which the consumer clicked on one of the results. In this case 41% of searchers found the results uninspiring enough to do another search. Better luck next time...

Amazon UK Traffic Sources

2007-07-30T08:00:12Z

Amazon.co.uk is the second most visited retail website after eBay UK based on UK internet visits and ranks #15 overall, just behind BBC.co.uk and ahead of YouTube. We're all familiar with the retail giant, but from where does Amazon get its traffic? I wanted to share and elaborate on the stats from our recent Technology Guardian column.

One quarter of Amazon's UK traffic comes from Google (combined www.google.co.uk and www.google.com) and 18% from other retail sites. After Amazon, consumers visit Google, other retailers (eBay, Play.com) and other Amazon properties (Amazon Auctions and IMDB).

The following table lists the top 20 websites visited after Amazon.co.uk in the four weeks to 21st July 2007

We're often asked how much of Amazon's traffic is books related and how much is electronics or other. We can't say for sure. Because of the complexity of the site's structure, it is near impossible to separate books from the rest.

What we can say is that from analysis of search terms sending the site traffic Amazon's strengths are definitely in books and electronics. The query “books”, searches for various book titles (“harry potter”, “giles wareing”, “secret church” ), searches for games consoles (“wii”, “xbox 360”) and searches for iPods, were among the top terms sending the site traffic in the four weeks to 21st July 2007.

The following table shows the top 10 non-branded terms sending visits to the site. I've included the paid and organic rate so you can get a sense for the search traffic that is coming from organic versus paid listings. (Amazon received 13% of its traffic from paid listings in the past four weeks).

Search Terms Sending UK Visits to Amazon.co.uk, Four weeks to 21st July 2007. Filtered to Remove Branded Search Terms.

Next Sale Tops Summer Sale Searches

2007-07-27T10:32:50Z

The day the Next summer sale began, Next.co.uk climbed to rank 3rd among retail websites, behind eBay UK and Amazon UK and ahead of retail giants Tesco and Argos. We issued a news release on this earlier this week and I wanted to share some of the stats here as the response to the Next sale was pretty remarkable. Whilst the sale started on the last day of the week, week on week traffic doubled to Next.co.uk. and the site ranked #7 last week up from #14 in the week ending 14th July 2007.

Also interesting, consumers spent an average of nearly 20 minutes on the website last week, up from just under 10 minutes the week before. The peak was reached on Saturday 21st July, the day the sale started with consumers spending an average of 27 minutes 57 seconds on the website.

Online enthusiasm for Next’s summer sale has been building over the past two years. Share of UK Internet searches for “next sale” were up 40% year on year and have nearly doubled (up 93%) over the past two years.

The search term “next sale” was the highest volume search term that included the keyword “sale” last week and ranked #34 among search terms sending visits to retail websites. Whilst many retailers are running sales, searches for sales from other retailers were far overshadowed by Next. The second most searched for retail sale was "boden sale" ranking as the #1218 search term sending visits to retail websites followed by "marks and spencer sale" at #1570.

Hitiwise UK: Top 10 Search Terms that Include the Keyword Sale. Four Weeks to 21st July 2007.

The Next sale appears to have been promoted via email, with 11% of the site's visits coming from Email Services last week. Shoppers are invited to sign up for advance VIP access to sales on the Next website and Hitwise data reveals an 8% gain year on year in the share of visits from Email Services.

LinkedIn UK Traffic - Popular with GMail and Yahoo! Mail Users

2007-07-23T07:53:43Z

Last week, I took inspiration from LeeAnn's (our analyst in San Francisco) post about Linked In for our weekly Site Seeing Column in The Guardian (sorry, still not available online). As LeeAnn found in the US, the recent spate of LinkedIn invitations we've all been receiving in our inboxes have pushed the share of UK Internet visits to the professional networking site up four fold year on year in June. As you can see below, most of that growth has occurred since late April.

The site received just over half (53%) of its traffic from search engines in the week to 14th July 2007 and 11% from email, with Gmail and Yahoo! Mail particularly popular with LinkedIn users.

Windows Live Hotmail took half of visits to email websites in June, with twice as much traffic as Yahoo! Mail and 10 times more than Gmail. But Yahoo! Mail accounted for more traffic to LinkedIn than Hotmail and Hotmail only accounted for twice the traffic than Gmail. The following pie charts illustrate the differences.

As LeeAnn noted in the US data, Gmail's prominence in the clickstream traffic for Linked In likely reflects the site's appeal to early adopters and Internet savvy professionals. The prominence of Yahoo! Mail indicates to me that age is an important factor. Hotmail may appeal to a younger user base (it is prominent in the clickstream of most social networks) whilst Yahoo! Mail and GMail appeal to professionals. Our demographic data certainly bears this out with Hotmail appealing more to those aged 18-24 whilst Yahoo! Mail appeals more to those aged 25-44 and 55+.

Facebook overtakes MySpace in Share of UK Internet Searches

2007-07-17T14:49:14Z

Last week a colleague pointed out that the share of UK internet searches for "facebook" were tied with those for "myspace". This week, Facebook continued to climb and so overtook MySpace. This means that the volume of UK searches for "facebook" were higher last week than for MySpace. Facebook continues to trail MySpace in visits. Last week, MySpace was 41% larger in share of UK internet visits than Facebook.

But does the metric of search volume matter? Absolutely! The most important reason why this metric matters is that search volume can be a predictive indicator. In May 2006, we predicted that Bebo would overtake MySpace in share of UK internet visits by the start of the school year.

We based this prediction on searches for the brands, growth in weekly and monthly visits, clickstream data and session duration. The most important metric was search data. Bebo overtaking MySpace in share of UK internet searches made it evident that the upstart social network could displace MySpace from the #1 position. Three months later (in August 2006), Bebo overtook MySpace in visits for a few weeks and the two sites remained virtually tied in share of UK internet visits until May 2007, when Bebo overtook MySpace in monthly visits.

The gap in market share of internet visits between Bebo and MySpace and Facebook has been closing rapidly. This is illustrated in the following chart and here are some figures to quantify the change. In the week to 6th January 2007, the gap in the share of visits to MySpace and Facebook was 265%. That was down to 41% last week (week to 14th July 2007). One month ago (week to 16th June) the gap was 92% and three months ago (week to 14th April) the gap was 149%.

Same goes for Bebo. The gap was 221% in market share of UK internet vistis at the start of the year (week to 6th January 2007). Last week, the gap was 64%. One month ago, the difference was 124% and 3 months ago 141%.

Facebook still has a way to go before it catches MySpace or Bebo. Last week, Bebo ranked #6 among All Categories of websites, MySpace ranked #8 and Facebook ranked #11.

23 July 2007 Update: Facebook climbed to #10 last week (week ending 21st July 2007) based on share of UK Internet visits. With MySpace at #10, the gap is closing rapidly. Here is an updated chart. Keep in mind that MySpace and Bebo may be experiencing a normal seasonal decline (summer holidays) that isn't affecting Facebook.

Emma Watson Beats Daniel Radcliffe as Top Potter Star Online

2007-07-10T14:10:34Z

Daniel Radcliffe may play the leading role, but it is Emma Watson that is the most sought out of the young Harry Potter actors online. UK Internet searches for “Emma Watson” have soared in the past two weeks on the back of premieres in cities around the globe. Last week, UK internet searches for "Emma Watson" were three times those for Daniel Radcliffe. UK Internet users are on the hunt for photos and gossip about this latest celebrity, with searches for “Emma Watson photos” and “Emma Watson boyfriend” topping the list of queries related to the star.

UK searches for "Emma Watson" have increased four fold in the past two weeks to overtake Paris Hilton (though I should mention by just one half of one percentage point). Emma Watson was the sixth most searched for celebrity in the UK last week after Chris Benoit, Kate Middleton, Rihanna, David Tennant and Fernando Torres.

Wimbledon boosts interest in Tennis and Rackets

2007-07-06T06:34:05Z

We issued a news release this week comparing interest in Wimbledon and the Tour de France. In preparing the release, we noticed that searches for Tennis are up year on year, indicating that the tournament (despite being dogged by bad weather) is driving up interest in the sport.

Share of UK internet searches for "tennis" are up 62% year on year and have nearly tripled in the past week, up 177%. Searches for "tennis rackets" are also up, doubling year on year. If you think the data might look different if we looked at the UK spelling (racquet), think again. UK consumers appear to have adopted the North American spelling with UK searches for “tennis rackets” shooting up last week whilst the term “tennis racquets” remained at 0% of all UK internet searches.

The most searched for racket brands were Babolat and Wilson, with both brands enjoying a boost in Internet searches in recent weeks. Second seed Rafael Nadal who is sporting a Babolat, seems to have fuelled demand for the brand. The most searched for Babolat racket last week was the Aeropro Drive, the model sported by Nadal. Roger Federer, the top ranked male player and Wimbledon winner for the past three years, has likely contributed to popularity of Wilson rackets along with Serena Williams, whose recent tirade saw her smash her 22 carat gold leaf inlayed Wilson racket.

Search Term Suggestions for "tennis rackets". Four weeks to 30th June 2007

Global Warming UK Traffic Goes to US Sites

2007-07-05T06:00:07Z

We issued a news release last week about the increased interest online in global warming, recycling and carbon footprints. I wanted to highlight and delve further into one of the points from that release. The increased interest in global warming raises interesting challenges for policy makers and those seeking to influence public opinion within the UK, as traffic is largely being directed to US websites.

The top website receiving UK traffic from the term "global warming" is Wikipedia, with the online encyclopaedia receiving one quarter of visits from searches for "global warming". After Wikipedia, the top sites are globalwarming.org, the US Environment Protection Agency, Royal Society and climatehotmap.org.

As the table below illustrates, the sites visited by US and UK internet users after searching for “global warming” are very similar with four of the top five websites receiving traffic from searches for “global warming” the same in the two markets.

Similarly, UK searches for “carbon footprint”, which recently soared on the back of David Miliband’s announcement
about the government website to help consumers calculate their own carbon footprint, sent 69% of UK visits to www.carbonfootprint.com, a US environmental website.

Google, which accounts for 79% of UK searches, largely dictates the flow of UK web traffic and this is reflected by the similar sites visited after searches for "global warming" in the US and UK. Google determines the websites that appear at the top of the listings largely based on inbound links. On global issues such as global warming, UK websites compete with US websites for those links and the attention of search engines.

With searches for "global warming", only two UK websites (BBC and Royal Society) appeared among the top 25 websites receiving visits from searches for "global warming". With searches for "carbon footprint", traffic again went to a US website.

Whilst this undoubtedly poses a serious challenge to UK organisations and policy makers seeking to influence public opinion, the door is not closed. Wikipedia can be edited by those anywhere in the world. Also, sponsored listings present an opportunity to get a message across the top of the search results and as they are regionally targeted, can be effective for those in local markets trying to influence a policy agenda.

Chris Benoit Tops UK Searches

2007-07-02T11:30:52Z

This morning, I had never heard of Chris Benoit, but it appears I may be alone. The search term "chris benoit" ranked #28 among all search terms last week in the UK, and was second only to "weather" among non-branded searches (i.e. those that don't contain a brand name in the search phrase). For those of you, like me, who are unfamiliar with wrestling, Chris Benoit is a World Wresting Entertainment (WWE) wrestler, who was found dead in his home after apparently killing his wife and son last week.

The top top site visited for searches for "chris benoit" last week was Wikipedia and the term was the second highest search term in volume of visits sent to the online encyclopaedia last week, after "wikipedia". The star's death also pushed the WWE website into the top 100 last week, with visits increasing 50% week on week.

I have had my eye on WWE for some time now. The website keeps popping up in our fast mover reports and the term "wwe" keeps popping up in search term lists. In June, the site ranked 100 among All Categories of websites. That is up from 160 in May and 193 in January.

So who is so interested in wrestling? It appears that the young and lower income are the biggest fans. In the past four weeks, 31% of UK visits to WWE.com were from those aged 18-24 with this age group 77% over-represented on the website relative to the online population. According to Experian's Mosaic Profiles, groups that tend to earn lower household incomes are also over-indexed on the site, including the groups Municipal Dependency, Ties of Community and Blue Collar Enterprise. These groups all include families living on lower incomes and they also tend to live in smaller cities (according to offline statistics compiled by Experian).

The following chart illustrates the rise in searches for "chris benoit" using Paris Hilton as the benchmark. The recent and steady rise in searches for "wwe" is also illustrated.

Slide.com, Rock You - Sites Gaining from Social Network Widgets

2007-06-28T08:08:41Z

Widgets that embed content into profiles in social networks are causing a stir in the UK rankings of Photography websites. Our Site Seeing column in this week's Technology Guardian (sorry still not available online so I can't provide a link) is about Slide.com, the photo sharing website, which two weeks ago overtook Flickr to take the #2 position among Photography websites. (Last week, it dropped back down to #3). Last week, Rock You ranked #4.

Photobucket has been the #1 ranked Photography website based on UK visits since February, when it overtook Flickr. Photobucket has held that #1 ranking largely due to traffic from Bebo and MySpace, with 33% of the site's traffic coming from Bebo last week and 22% from MySpace. By contrast, Google was the #1 source of visits to Flickr last week, accounting for 19% of the site's visits, 5% came from Google Images, 4% from Blogger and only 2.4% from MySpace.

The following chart illustrates how different Flickr is from the others and just how important the traffic from social networks is to Rock You and Slide.com.

Last week, 83% of RockYou's traffic came directly from a social network, with 42% coming from Bebo and 37% from Facebook. Similarly, 77% of Slide.com's traffic came directly from a social network, with 43% coming from Facebook, 23% from Bebo and 8% from MySpace. I tried it myself, loading my wedding photos to Slide.com and sharing them both on my Facebook profile and on my personal Wordpress blog. It's incredibly easy to share lots of photos with lots of people!

What this will mean for Flickr remains to be seen. What it does show is that widgets on social networks can drive a pile of traffic and bring a site from relative obscurity to the fore. MySpace has recently clamped down on some such activities potentially putting the future of these photo sharing in jeopardy.

Next week I'll do a follow up post on where social networks send their traffic - in particular what does clickstream traffic tell us about the interests of users of Bebo, MySpace and Facebook and how do they differ.