Hitwise Intelligence - UK

New Amazon Kindle searches spike to challenge iPad mini

2010-09-02T09:50:49Z

September has only just begun and already people are talking about Christmas. Planning committees are being assembled to organise the office Christmas Party, high street retailers are bringing out decorations and online gossip has turned to the hottest gifts for the festive season.

One of the hotly tipped gifts for Christmas 2010 is Amazon’s latest e-reader, better known as the Kindle 3. Traditional “dead tree books” are never going to be eradicated completely, but ebooks are starting to hit the mainstream. In the last year, generic searches for e-readers have doubled, while Kindle-related searches have increased eight fold.

With the smaller, sleeker and cheaper Kindle 3 now available Amazon look set to further capitalise on their position as a market leader in the e-reader market.

As with many gadgets, search behaviour favours branded search terms rather than generic terms. Searches for branded terms search as ‘sony reader’ and ‘amazon kindle’ have always been more popular than ‘ebook’. What’s interesting to note from the above chart is the rise in popularity of Kindle-related search terms against other branded terms. In the last month searches for Kindles have never been higher. Amazon’s product is pulling away from the competition, where previously the volume of searches has been roughly even between Kindles and other e-readers.

While the Amazon Kindle has a competitive edge over other similar products, the real brand war will be fought between Amazon and Apple. The iPad is more than an e-reader but it is also a lot more expensive than the Kindle and its peers. With Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategy the Kindle 3 could provide a challenge to Apple’s successful iPad.

A couple of weeks ago Sky News reported that Apple was planning a new ‘iPad mini’ to be launched in time for Christmas. The ‘iPad mini’ is rumoured to have a seven inch screen, much closer to the new Kindle’s six inch reading screen. Searches for both ‘ipad mini’ and ‘kindle 3’ have spiked since the end of July but the online popular vote seems to be with the Kindle, as in the last week searches spiked for ‘kindle 3’ while there was a direct correlation in a drop in searches for ‘ipad mini’.

Could the new Kindle be the iPad killer? Amazon certainly seem to think so, reporting that the Kindle 3 has been selling faster than any of its previous incarnations, according to Mashable. Apple however, sold its first million iPads in 28 days, less than half the time it took to sell its first million iPhones. It is still worth noting that searches for iPads are 300% higher than searches for Kindles.

Amazon have their work cut out for them if they intend to threaten Apple’s dominance - follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest analysis.

Surge in searches for fixed rate mortgages

2010-08-27T13:47:02Z

The number of internet searches for fixed rate mortgages soared between April – June 2010 (Q2) compared to the same time period last year, with searches for the term ‘fixed rate mortgages 10 years’ up almost ten fold over the period. Searches for ‘fixed rate mortgages 5 years’ increased seven fold, while searches for ‘tracker mortgages’ only saw an increase of 16%, indicating that many consumers are expecting interest rates to rise over the medium term.

The table below details the annual increases in UK and US searches for portfolios of key finance / economic indicator terms.

Our analysis also reveals searches for houses for sale rose by a quarter between April – June 2009 (Q2), compared to the same time last year, and searches for properties for rent experienced a similar increase – up 22% compared to a year ago. These trends indicate strong buyer interest combined with improved affordability due to the low interest rate environment. The fact that house prices remain below pre-recession levels gives buyers a strong incentive to enter the market ahead of any possible interest rate rises.

Experian’s Insight Index also analysed searches for other personal finance products, and revealed searches for loans fell by 14% between April and June this year, compared to the same time period last year. Online searches for terms like ‘cheap loans’ and ‘low interest loans’ also saw declines of 16% and 47% respectively. The latest data released by the Bank of England confirms that the number of unsecured loans issued has fallen.

Credit cards however continued to rise in popularity, with online searches for ‘credit cards with zero interest’ up by 511% this quarter compared to this time last year. However, searches relating to credit card deals with rewards all experienced a decline in online searches, suggesting consumers are – for the time being - less focused on perks:

• Searches for ‘credit card airmiles’ fell by 24.03% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009
• Searches for ‘credit card rewards’ fell by 12.12% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009
• Searches for ‘credit card cashback’ experienced a fall of 5.02% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009

Experian’s Insight Index also highlights key differences between UK and US online searches. The US experienced a fall of 1% in searches for property for sale between April – June 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. However searches for ‘property for rent’ saw a huge increase of 104% in Q2. US consumers, like those in the UK, were less interested in searching for the term ‘mortgages’ compared to last year with a fall of 20% this quarter compared to April – June 2009.

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The Physio Room: content is king

2010-08-24T17:14:09Z

Looking through this week’s list of fast moving websites, one that jumped out at me was The Physio Room, which last week ranked 15th in our Health and Medical category and was also the 12th most popular Sport and Fitness retailer. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to the site has increased five-fold over the last month.

When I looked to see where the traffic was coming from, I was surprised by the chart below. As you would expect, Google UK sends the most traffic to the site, but the second biggest source of visits, currently accounting for a fifth of all traffic, is Telegraph Fantasy football. And the reason? The Physio Room publishes a list of all the current injuries to Premier League footballers – clearly a useful resource for fantasy football players, and a great example of a site making imaginative use of content to attract visitors.

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1 in every 100 UK Internet searches Sky Sports related

2010-08-16T10:30:28Z

Although the lower leagues had already kicked off earlier in the month, the football season truly got underway this weekend with the first Barclays Premier League matches. As you would expect, UK Internet visits to key football related websites increased significantly last week: the Official Fantasy Premier League site by 186%, Sky Sports by 15%. There was a 12% increase in traffic to BBC Sport but, as the table below illustrates, it has yet to reach the same level for traffic it experienced during the World Cup.

All of the three sites mentioned above ranked amongst the top 100 most visited in the UK last week, with BBC Sport in 13th position and Sky Sports at number 15. Joining them in the top 100, in 70th position, was the Sky Digital TV Shop, the place where people go to either purchase Sky TV or upgrade their packages (we have only recently categorised this site within Hitwise, hence the lack of historical data in the chart above). The site is most popular in the North East, although Walsall is the individual postal area that that currently most over-indexes in terms of traffic. This perhaps reflects the fact that there are four teams from West Midlands (Aston Villa, West Brom, Birmingham City, Wolves) competing in the top flight of English football this season - the first time this has happened for 27 years.

The main driver for all this traffic was clearly the demand for the Sky Sports channels, and searches for the terms ‘sky sports’ and ‘sky sports football’ increased by 38% and 22% respectively last week. These were the two most popular of 3,700 different ways in which people searched for the channels last week. Aggregating all of these together using our new broad matching tool, we can see that all of these variations accounted for 1% of all UK searches last week – i.e. 1 in every 100 searches in the UK was related to Sky Sports.

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Facebook accounts for 1 in 6 UK page views, but is it reaching saturation point?

2010-08-09T10:53:55Z

Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK: in June it accounted for 7.14% of all UK Internet visits and over half (54.48%) of all visits to a social networking websites. In terms of total visits it continues to trail Google UK (9.59% market share in June) and, as we’ve highlighted before, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, using the measure of total page views rather than visits, Facebook is way ahead. As the table below illustrates, the social network accounted for 16.73% of UK page views during June. In other words: 1 in every 6 Internet pages viewed in the UK was a Facebook page.

Facebook continues to grow around the world (last month it reached half a billion registered users) and there is no doubt that it leads the social networking pack in the UK. However, with 26m British users already, when will it start to reach saturation point? As the chart below illustrates, Facebook’s market share of UK page views has trebled over the last five years, but growth has slowed significantly over the last six months. Last month there was a slight decline in share, but this may well be down to seasonality (the August / September back to school / college / university period is significant for Facebook).

Another metric is average time spend on the site, a key metric for user engagement on social networks. Facebook has a very high average session time (almost half an hour) but, as the chart below illustrates, this has also stabilised over the last six months after increasing rapidly during the site’s ascendency. Cleary Facebook is not losing traffic in the UK, but do these stats do point to a stabilisation? The rapid period of the site’s growth is now probably over in the UK, but does that mean Facebook has reached saturation point?

What next for Facebook in the UK? We’d welcome your comments either in the box below or via Twitter.

Skin Cancer searches and sunshine

2010-08-02T16:04:54Z

We’re having a great summer in the UK, which makes a pleasant change from the last couple of years. However, there are downsides to the warm weather and sunshine, not least the risk of sunburn and, in the worst cases, skin cancer.

Searches for skin cancer are up 19% year on year and have increased significantly over the last few months. The chart below illustrates the historical correlation between these searches and the amount of sunshine hours in the UK (source: UK Met Office).

One of the interesting things that we discovered when looking at the search terms variations report for ‘skin cancer’ was the number of people looking for pictures or photos. The table below lists the top 10 skin cancer related terms, and four of them are picture searches.

About Cancer, currently the biggest recipient of traffic from the term ‘skin cancer pictures’, has experienced a 67% increase in UK Internet traffic over the last year, illustrating the benefits of optimising for image search.

Cameron's Big Society prompts big traffic spike

2010-07-30T09:09:00Z

Last week the Prime Minister set out his vision for the “big society”, the flagship social policy of the Conservative-LibDem coalition government. The initiative aims to take the emphasis of responsibility away from the government and instead empower people to run local services such as schools, post offices and transport networks.

The idea of the big society is something David Cameron has spoken about for some time, first presenting it in his campaign to become leader of the Tory party back in 2005. However, it was only in the last week that online interest in the idea peaked, after the Prime Minister officially launched the campaign.

As the chart below illustrates, between the week ending 17 July 2010 and the week ending 24 July 2010, searches for ‘big society’ increased eight-fold. During the same period searches for ‘the big society’ tripled.

As with all political ideas there has been a mixed online response to Mr Cameron’s big society, ranging from wholehearted support to claims that the concept is a cover for public spending cuts. What should be heartening for the Conservatives is that, of the 593 search terms related to the big society searched for in the past 12 weeks, none of the top 50 were negative.

The search terms used to look for information about the big society are indicative of search behaviour driven by curiosity rather than either support or disapproval. Search terms such as ‘what is big society’ were prominent, and it wasn’t until the 51st most popular search term that a disparaging phrase turned up. This is a family blog so I won’t reprint the phrase, but I can reveal that one of the words is often used in the phrase: “the dogs...”

The Conservatives benefited from the volume of searches for ‘big society’, with the microsite thebigsociety.co.uk picking up 17% of all search traffic from the term and the party’s homepage receiving 12%. The Guardian also capitalised on interest for the story with three of its properties appearing in the top 10. As people online shared their thoughts and ideas about the big society idea through social media, it was no big surprise to see that Facebook and Twitter also made the top 10 downstream websites list.

Times Paywall traffic loss less than expected

2010-07-20T16:03:55Z

It’s been a few weeks now since The Times made their controversial move to take their content behind a paywall and charge online consumers to read their content.

The move has attracted a lot of attention as The Times is the first general news content provider to charge for its online content. Specialist publications such as the Wall Street Journal have successfully made the transition from free content to online paywalls, but The Times does not provide the niche content of a specialist publication and there has been ample speculation about consumers deserting The Times in favour of free online content.

We provided data to the Financial Times that revealed that The Times had lost two thirds of its market share by visits since the paywall was erected. In the weeks before the paywall went up www.thetimes.co.uk received an average of 4.29% of all visits to the News and Media – Print category. By the week ending 10 July 2010, The Times’ market share of visits had dropped to 1.43%, just 33% of where it had been five weeks previously.

The latest data for the week ending 17 July 2010 shows that The Times' market share has dropped off further still to 1.37% of the News and Media – Print category. The rate of decline is slowing however and the data suggests visits to The Times’ website are stabilising.

Experts and commentators may crow that this is exactly what they said would happen when Rupert Murdoch first took the decision to put The Times behind a paywall. Just take a moment though to see what the site has achieved.

The Times has retained a third of their online visits, and visitors are still spending an average of around three minutes per visit on the website, indicating that they are happy to pay for the content and not disappearing to alternative sites for news.

The website is also still ranked higher than the Financial Times in terms of market share of visits, its nearest competitor in the paywall market. The FT has received deserved praise for its financial model, with one journalist suggesting they had “unlocked the secret of eternal profitability”. If The Times can match that feat with its paywall then the exercise has been a success.

Time will tell if The Times loses further internet traffic and when the introductory offer of “£1 for the first 30 days” expires perhaps consumers will search for their news content from other providers. So far though, The Times seems to be doing just fine. For now Mr Murdoch’s gamble has paid off.

Harry Potter fever: Wizarding World theme park, Deathly Hallows, Lego game

2010-07-09T10:39:46Z

With the unveiling in June of the Universal theme park, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the movie trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, it's fair to say that Harry Potter fever is casting a spell over online audiences again.

Of the 32 million distinct search terms that UK internet users typed into search engines over June, nearly 16,500 of them contained the term “harry potter”, meaning 1 in every 2,000 search terms was Harry Potter-related. Such was the popularity of the fantastic boy wizard that “harry potter” was a more popular search term than “ipad uk”, the second most popular Apple iPad related search term.

These three Harry Potter events accounted for the majority of the search traffic and search terms. Of the top 20 Harry Potter-related search terms, five were related to the new theme park in Orlando, four were related to the Lego game and three were related to the new movie.

Despite having the fewest search terms, search traffic for the seventh Harry Potter movie was the highest in volume terms, accounting for over 8% of Harry Potter searches. Searches for the Universal theme park accounted for over 5.7% and the new Lego game took 3.8% of the market share of related searches.

In the lead up to Daniel Radcliffe and other stars from the movies opening of Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter on 18 June by, online searches received a noticeable spike in traffic.

Of the key search terms related to the Harry Potter theme park, Universal benefited from nearly a third of all search clicks. News sites including the BBC, Metro and Daily Mail made up the bulk of the remaining sites that received traffic boosts having featured stories about the launch of the theme park. From the travel industry, both Virgin Holidays and Travel Republic were among the top 20 websites to receive traffic from the collected Harry Potter search terms. Both travel companies received the majority of their traffic from paid clicks.

What’s particularly interesting to note about the Harry Potter searches is that they are all vying for attention combatively rather than collaboratively. Intuitively, you would expect fans of the saga to be interested in all things Harry Potter. The natural assumption then would be that searches would increase in tandem across the key events. The data shows however, that during the rise of searches for terms relating to the Harry Potter theme park, searches for the Harry Potter movies dropped off.

These results indicate that a joint marketing approach to promote both theme park and movie at the same time is a risky strategy. Far better to grab the Harry Potter fans for one event at one time and then grab a “second wind” with a follow-up announcement.

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Times paywall: initial data and analysis

2010-06-24T12:23:41Z

Following months of speculation, News International has finally erected a paywall around the Times newspaper website. After a couple of weeks running two sites, (www.timesonline.co.uk and www.thetimes.co.uk) in parallel, visitors to the former site are now automatically redirected to the latter. Since last Tuesday, users have had to register to read content on the Times website (as well the separate Sunday Times site). However, they don’t yet have to pay: during the trial period, which is expected to last until the end of the month, simply having registered is enough to access the content behind the paywall.

So, what has the impact been on traffic to the Times website? The chart below illustrates the market share of UK Internet visits within our News and Media – Print category. We have aggregated traffic to both old and new Times sites in order to cut out any double counting and provide a consistent comparison and, as you can see, the title’s market share has dropped from 4.37% during the week ending May 22nd to 2.67% last week (w/e June 19th).

The Times was only forcing people to register for part of last week, so the daily traffic chart below shows an even steeper drop off: yesterday the title’s market share was down to 1.81%, under half of its average during May. Its average session time has also fallen from an average of five and half to three minutes. That figure is actually higher than many people would have expected, given that a lots of visitors will be spending very little time there if they are choosing not to register.

The Times has actually setup a separate site for user registrations, MyTimes+. Last week this was the top site visited after the Times, picking up 17.6% of downstream traffic; implying that a significant amount of users are choosing to register in order to access content. The next most visited website after the main Times site was the Telegraph, which picked up 3.8% of downstream traffic last week. The chart below illustrates the amount of downstream traffic that the Times sends to its main competitors (plus the Sun and Sky News), and how this has changed over the last couple of months.

The amount of traffic that the Times has sent to these sites has dipped over the last couple of weeks. At first glance this seems counter intuitive: surely people ‘bouncing’ from the Times site after being put off by the paywall must be going to competitors? In fact, the reason for the dip is the amount of traffic that the Times is now sending to the MyTimes+ registration page. Therefore, a more accurate picture of which sites are picking up Times readers not prepared to register the can be found by looking at the downstream data from MyTimes+.

As you can see from the table above, around a third of MyTimes+ visitors go on to another Times property. The biggest beneficiaries of traffic from a competitor perspective are the Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and BBC News. Looking at it from the opposite direction the chart below, we can see that the Independent is most reliant on traffic from MyTimes+, which accounted for 0.6% of its visits last week. The Telecgraph was close behind and the Guardian in third place, implying that the Times’ traditional broadsheet competitors are best placed to pick up readers not willing to register or pay to see its content.

So, its still early days, but the conclusion so far seems to be this: since it forced users to register in order to view its content, the Times has lost market share. However, this decline has clearly not been catastrophic and none of the paper’s rivals has particularly benefitted. Yet. The real test will come when people actually have to pay rather than simply register to view the Times’ content. When that happens we will of course provide some more analysis, so keep an eye on the blog and our Twitter feed for updates.

Budget 2010: the online response

2010-06-23T13:26:40Z

As expected, yesterday’s budget, presented by the Chancellor, George Osborne, gained a huge amount of press coverage. Given the wide range of changes introduced, it is not a surprise to see that many people went online to research both the key points and finer details. Yesterday (22/06/10) 1 in every 179 UK searches was budget related, including 21 of the top 1000 terms. “budget 2010” was the 25th most searched for term in the UK yesterday, making it the top generic term (“budget” was 29th overall and “world cup 2010” was 32nd).

Here’s a list of the 21 budget related terms that appeared in the top 1,000 yesterday.

1. “budget 2010” (0.114% of all UK Internet searches yesterday, making it the 25th most searched for term overall)
2. “budget” (0.094%, 29th)
3. “the budget” (0.054%, 66th)
4. “budget 2010 uk” (0.031%, 115th)
5. “the budget 2010 uk” (0.016%, 234th)
6. “capital gains tax” (0.014%, 261st)
7. “emergency budget” (0.013%, 288th)
8. “budget news” (0.013%, 310th)
9. “bbc budget” (0.011%, 346th)
10. “tax credits” (0.009%, 414th)
11. “child benefit” (0.009%, 430th)
12. “emergency budget 2010” (0.009%, 446th)
13. “budget calculator” (0.007%, 557th)
14. “2010 budget” (0.007%, 560th)
15. “george osborne” (0.006%, 606th)
16. “child tax credit“ (0.006%, 667th)
17. “vat” (0.006%, 704th)
18. “disability living allowance” (0.005%, 757th)
19. “uk budget” (0.005%, 857th)
20. “the budget 2010” (0.005%, 861st)
21. “what is capital gains tax” (0.004%. 937th)

After a number of the variations on the word “budget”, the next most popular term was “capital gains tax”, with tax credits, child benefit, VAT and the disability living allowance also picking up references in the top 1,000. “bbc budget” was the top branded term (“sky news live” fell slightly outside of the top 1,000), and George Osbourne was the most searches for politician, followed by Harriet Harman (also falling outside the top 1,000).

Both BBC News and Sky News experienced spikes in traffic yesterday, but I wanted to highlight some of smaller sites that benefited from traffic in the chart below. Of these, Telegraph Blogs experienced the biggest increase (87% increase in UK Internet visits between 21/06/10 and 22/06/10), followed by Telegraph Shares (85%), Yahoo! Finance (74%) and MSN Money (60%).

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Budweiser tops the Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index during week 2

2010-06-22T15:11:02Z

Budweiser, an official FIFA World Cup sponsor and sponsor of the USA team, was the brand that made the most of its World Cup involvement last week. UK Internet searches for Budweiser increased by 25% between the week ending June 12th and the week ending June 19th and its Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index score increased from 145 to 182 based upon the volume of searches for the brand.

The top five performing brands in the Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index last week (w/e June 19th) were as follows.

Budweiser was the only brand featured in last week’s Index to retain its position in the top five. The remaining top four positions in the table were this week filled by sponsors from a variety of categories, with car manufacturer Kia in second place and significantly outperforming its larger automotive rivals. Kia (Slovakian team sponsor and FIFA partner) saw UK Internet searches increase by 13.2% and its Brand Index improve from 91 to 103. Fiat was the next best performing automotive brand with an 8.2% increase in searches. Australian shopping centre giant, Westfield, completed the top five along with Vodafone and Adidas.

It’s interesting that the brands that performed well in the Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index this week were those sponsoring the ‘underdog’ teams: Kia (Slovakia), Westfield (Australia), Vodafone (Greece) and Budweiser (USA). Given the poor performances of some of the favourites in the opening games, this isn’t perhaps so surprising.

Meanwhile, the Technology and Telecoms category was the best overall performer in the brand index with searches up 5.2%, well ahead of its nearest rival, Automotive (1.6%). However, this uplift hasn’t yet had a big impact on searches for many of their products. Sales of televisions were expected to surge on the back of the World Cup, but last week searches of television were down 14% compared to last year. It would seem to be the mobile phone brands Vodafone and T-Mobile that are boosting the performance of this category.

Other ways in which the World Cup has influenced UK online behaviour over the last week include:

• Following the 20-fold increase in searches for vuvuzelas between the weeks ending June 5th and June 12th, there was a further 4-fold increase in searches last week. During the week ending June19th there were five times as many searches for ‘vuvuzela’ than for ‘wayne rooney’, the England team’s most searched for player.

• Bavaria, the Dutch larger, was the fifth most visited beer website in the UK on the 15th June following the beer brand’s marketing ambush stunt during the Holland versus Denmark game, which saw the arrest of two Dutch women.

• 1 in every 88 Internet searches in the UK was World cup related last week. The FIFA homepage (www.fifa.com) is the biggest recipient of World Cup search traffic, and last week was the 71h most visited website in the UK, and the fourth most popular Sports website.

• UK Internet searches relating to the French football team increased by 150% last week as the team experienced problems with player revolt following the sending home of Nicolas Anelka.

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LoveFilm: the 11th most visited online retailer in the UK

2010-06-17T11:51:35Z

Yesterday BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs program You and Yours included an item on LoveFilm, the online DVD rental and movie streaming service. It included an interview with the company’s CEO Simon Calver, as well as myself talking about the popularity of the site. You can listen to the interviews on iPlayer here, but I thought that I’d share some of the key finding on the blog:

• Since taking over Amazon’s DVD rental business in early 2008, UK internet traffic to Love Film has increased by 150%.

• Love Film is now one the top 100 websites in the UK, and last month the 11th most popular online retailer (putting it ahead of a number of big names including: B&Q, ASOS, Apple, Top Shop, Currys, and HMV).

• It is also the second most visited movie website in the UK after IMDB.

• Love Film is particularly popular with young professionals and therefore receives much of its traffic from London and other big cities such as Manchester and Glasgow.

• Unlike most other retailers it isn’t particularly reliant on search engines for traffic (they account for just one-fifth of visits vs. two-fifths for a typical retailer).

• Instead, other key sources of visits are social networks (it is the 8th most popular retailer visited after Facebook), email and entertainment websites – with much of the former traffic coming via advertising, affiliates and refer a friend schemes.

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South African Airways and beer companies biggest beneficiaries of World Cup sponsorship so far

2010-06-15T10:29:52Z

Every week during the World Cup we’ll be publishing the Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, our way of measuring a selection of brands’ sponsorship activities. The Index is based upon the volume of UK Internet searches for multiple variations of each brand. All of the brands selected are either official Fifa World Cup sponsors, or sponsors of national teams with products that have strong brand recognition in the UK. The base for the index was set at 100 using the average weekly search volume for each brand during May 2010.

South African Airways was the brand that benefited most its sponsorship of the Fifa Football World Cup last week. UK Internet searches for the South African Airways brand (one of the South African team’s official sponsors) increased by 129.2% between the week ending June 5th and the week ending June 12th. South African Airways’ Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index* score increased from 109 for the week ending June 5th to 250 for the week ending June 12th.

The top five performing brands in the Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index last week (w/e June 12th) were as follows.

1. South African Airways: 129.2% increase in brand searches between the weeks ending June 5th and June 12th.
2. Heineken: 75.0%
3. Carlsberg: 50.0%
4. Corona: 50.0%
5. Budweiser: 33.3%

The remaining top four positions in the table were taken up by beer companies, with Heineken (one of the Netherlands’ sponsors) experiencing a 75% increase in searches for its brand in the UK last week. Carlsberg (official sponsors of the England team) and Corona (sponsors of Mexico, South Africa’s opponents in the tournament’s opening match) both experienced a 50% increase, while searches for Budweiser (sponsors of the USA, England’s opponents last Saturday and also Fifa World Cup sponsors) were up by a third.

The massive spike in searches for South African Airways illustrates the appetite for last minute travel to watch the World Cup. There has also been an 85% increase in searches for flights to South Africa over the last couple of weeks. However, the industry Index that saw the biggest increase in searches last week was Food and Drink (up by 8%), as illustrated by the strong performance of beer brands. It just beat Travel (up 7.4%), while Technology and Telecoms came in third with a 4.8% increase.

Other ways in which the World Cup has influenced UK online behaviour over the last week include:

• Following the England vs. USA match on Saturday, there was a 12-fold increase in searches for unfortunate England goalkeeper Robert Green.

• UK Internet visits to Gambling – Sports websites increased by 13% on the previous week. The biggest beneficiaries of thin increase in traffic were: Betfair Soccer (soccer.betfair.com, visits up 67%), William Hill Sports Betting (sports.williamhill.com, visits up 26%), and BetFred (www.betfred.com, visits up 23%).

• 1 in every 144 Internet searches in the UK was World cup related last week. The Fifa website remains the biggest recipient of World Cup search traffic, and last week was the 109th most visited website in the UK, and the fourth most popular Sports website.

Last week there was also a 20-fold increase in searches for 'vuvuzuela', the controverisal horns that are used to make the swarm of bees sound heard at all the matches.. The table below lists the 20 most popular vairations on the term last week, including 'vuvuzuela annoying', a number of terms including the keyword 'ban', and - worryingly for some - a number of terms pointing towards a purchase intent.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter and/or download a copy of the Experian Marketing Services World Cup report.

Rio Ferdinand the most searched for footballer in the UK; Cristiano Ronaldo the most popular around the world

2010-06-11T10:16:07Z

Last week 1 in every 155 search terms typed into a search engine in the UK were World Cup related. However, this number refers only to terms containing variations on the phrase ‘world cup’; there are obviously lots of other types of search taking place as a result of events in south Africa not least a many related to the footballers actually playing in the tournament.

Injured England captain Rio Ferdinand was the most searched for footballer in the UK during the week ending 05/06/10, and he was joined in the top 10 at number 3 by Theo Walcott, another England star who won’t be playing in South Africa. Joe Cole, a potential Premier League transfer target over the summer and for some a surprise addition to the England squad, was the second most searched for player. Here is the full top 10 list:

1. Rio Ferdinand
2. Joe Cole
3. Theo Walcott
4. Cristiano Ronaldo
5. Wayne Rooney
6. Steven Gerrard
7. Fernando Torres
8. Frank Lampard
9. John Terry
10. Emile Heskey

Former Manchester United winger and Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo was in the fourth place in the UK, but was the most searched for player in all of the other countries studied: France, USA, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. The lists of the most searched players in different countries in the tables below reveal the global popularity of the football’s biggest stars. People all over the world are searching for Cristiano Ronaldo, while Spanish players are also extremely popular – Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas and David Villa appear high up on many of the lists. Spanish, Mexican and Portuguese players are the most searched for in the USA, illustrating the popularity of ‘soccer’ amongst the Hispanic population in that country. However, of all the countries that we studied, only in England and Brazil were the top 10s dominated by domestic players.

France::
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. David Villa
3. Lionel Messi
4. Deco
5. Fernando Torres
6. Yoann Gourcuff
7. Ronaldinho
8. Thierry Henry
9. Cesc Fabregas
10. Djibril Cissé

USA:
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. Ronaldinho
3. Landon Donovan
4. Lionel Messi
5. Carlos Vela
6. Giovani dos Santos
7. Jonathan dos Santos
8. Cesc Fabregas
9. Cuauhtemoc Blanco
10. Wayne Rooney

Brazil:
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. Grafite
3. Robinho
4. Messi
5. Ronaldinho
6. Nilmar
7. Fernando Torres
8. Kaka
9. Daniel Alves
10. Deco

Australia:
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. Tim Cahill
3. Hary Kewell
4. Fernando Torres
5. Ronaldinho
6. Joe Cole
7. Cesc Fabregas
8. Mark Schwarzer
9. Rio Ferdinand
10. Kaka

New Zealand:
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. Wayne Rooney
3. Lionel Messi
4. Ronaldinho
5. Kaka
6. Fernando Torres
7. Winston Reid
8. Ryan Nelsen
9. Bastian Schweinsteiger
10. David Villa

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