Hitwise Intelligence - UK

Has the credit crunch killed ethical consumerism?

2008-09-17T17:00:00Z

While the troubles facing the finance industry have picked up the headlines this week, the impact of the credit crunch continues to be felt elsewhere in the economy. One assumption people have made is that consumers will be less inclined to make more expensive ethical purchases as their disposable income falls. The recent fall in organic food sales reported by supermarkets seems to back this claim up.

At Hitwise we believe that search behaviour is a great way of tracking consumer behaviour. So, to test the ethical consumption hypothesis we created four search term portfolios: Carbon/Environment (e.g. �??co2 emissions�??, �??hybrid cars�??), Efficiency (e.g. �??loft insulation�??, �??underfloor heating�??), Fair Trade (e.g. �??fair trade clothing�??, �??charity shops�??) and Organic Terms (e.g. �??organic vegetables�??, �??riverford organic�??).The chart below illustrates how searches for these four portfolios of terms have fared over the last year.

As you can see, the graph highlights a number of interesting trends. Firstly, the only one of the four to have experienced a significant increase over the last year was the Efficiency portfolio, perhaps not surprising given the rising price of fuel. The others have all declined over the last year, although only slightly. There are also clear seasonal peaks: Fair Trade searches peak at Christmas as people look for ethical gifts; while Efficiency searches increase during autumn / winter.

The table below lists the top sites receiving traffic from Efficiency searches, and these are a combination Government-related sites (e.g. Energy Savings Trust, Government Grants), fuel sites (e.g. Oil Price Check, Fuel Oil Direct), price comparison engines (e.g. uSwitch, Money Supermarket), and retailers that are well optimized for the terms (e.g. BoilerJuice, Screwfix Direct). The appearance of The Pension Service highlights the importantance of this issue to older people.

Concern about energy prices has also led to more people visiting utilties websites, presumable to check prices and change suppliers. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet traffic to a custom category of electricity and gas suppliers has doubled over the last year.

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DIY and furniture retailers overtake estate agents online

2008-09-11T12:00:00Z

UK Internet visits to house and garden retail websites have increased by 20.5% over the last 12 months, despite the credit crunch and falling house prices. At the same time, UK Internet visits to estate agents and property websites have fallen by 35.2%.

A recent report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) showed that UK estate agents are now selling an average of just one property per week, and this decline is mirrored online. The credit crunch has hit online estate agents hard: as the chart above illustrates, in August 2007 our Business and Finance �?? Property category accounted for 0.85%% of all UK Internet visits, but by last month this figure had fallen to 0.55%. Falling demand for houses is mirrored by consumer search behaviour, with UK Internet searches for �??houses for sale�?? down 53.1% between August 2007 and August 2008.

At the same time, the share of UK Internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds �?? House and Garden category accounted increased from 0.49% in August 2007 to 0.59% last month, overtaking the Business and Finance �?? Property category on the way. It looks as if people are choosing to do up their existing houses rather than move. The interesting thing about the growth in House and Garden retailers is that it applies both to DIY retailers, such as B&Q, Screwfix and Homebase, and furniture retailers such as Ikea, Laura Ashley and Wilkinson Plus. In order to illustrate this we created two customer home retail sub-categories: as the chart below shows, both types of retailer have increased their share of Internet visits over the last 12 months.

One of the factors behind the success of house and garden retailers online has been increase in online DIY queries as people look improve their accommodation on a budget. UK Internet searches for the top 10 DIY-related �??how to�?? queries have increased by 25% over the last 12 months. Here are the top 10 during August:

1. �??how to plaster�??
2. �??how to lay decking�??
3. �??how to wallpaper�??
4. �??how to hang a door�??
5. �??how to lay a patio�??
6. �??how to lay laminate flooring�??
7. �??how to hang wallpaper�??
8. �??how to make curtains�??
9. �??how to make a canopy porch�??
10. �??how to tile a bathroom�??

This is the first of a number of new credit crunch related insights that we�??ll be putting out over the next couple of weeks, so keep an on the blog and our Twitter feed for updates.

Paid search rates by industry

2008-09-09T15:00:00Z

We launched our New Search Intelligence tool in the UK today and, amongst other enhancements, it includes additional paid / organic search data. One great new feature allows you to measure paid search rates by industry, so I thought I�??d provide a preview here. The chart below illustrates the percentage of search traffic that came from paid clicks for a number of key industries during August (4 weeks ending 30/08/2008).

As you can see, the industries that rely most on paid search traffic are Insurance (45.0%) and Utilities (37.4%). Shopping & Classifieds and Travel both rely on paid clicks for a quarter of their search traffic, while Banks and Automotive are also above average users of paid search. News & Media and Entertainment are the least reliant on paid search, with even Government sites receiving a greater proportion of their search traffic from paid clicks.

As the Christmas retail season is nearly upon us, I also carried out the same exercise with the main retail sub-categories. As you can see from the chart below, Appliances & Electronics retailers are most reliant on paid search traffic, while Grocery and Alcohol are the least. Other types of retailer that are particularly reliant on paid search include House & Garden and Computers.

For more details of our New Search Intelligence, click here.

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Olympics winners: sports sites, bike retailers and sportswear manufacturers

2008-08-29T10:00:00Z

Following the success of Team GB in Beijing, we were curious to see who else benefited from the Olympics hype. As the chart below illustrates, the most clear online winners were sports websites, both information and retail sites. UK Internet traffic to sites within our Sports category shot up to an all time high, and last week they accounted for one in every 29 visits. As we pointed out last week, the big winner was the BBC Sport website, which received one in every five visits to a Sport site during the Olympics.

While our Shopping and Classifieds �?? Sports and Fitness category received less visits than the overall sports category, it still reached a new peak during the Olympics and for the week ending August 23rd traffic was up 36% year-on-year. Looking at top sports retail websites last week, it is perhaps no surprise to see that four of the top 10 were cycling websites, including Halfords at number one. The success of Chris Hoy et al has obviously encouraged Brits to get in the saddle. As the chart below illustrates, each of the top 4 cycling sites experienced increases in traffic over the Olympic fortnight.

Another company that benefited from the team GB halo effect was Adidas, the official kit sponsor. As you can see from the chart below, last week searches for �??adidas�?? reached their highest level this year. For the 4 weeks ending August 23rd, almost 80% of this traffic went to Adidas�??s own sites. The largest independent recipient of traffic was JD Sports, which received 5.7% of traffic from �??adidas�?? searches, although it paid for almost 90% of that traffic.

Two other sportswear manufacturers that also benefited by association were Puma and Speedo. Puma sponsor the fastest man in the world, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, and traffic to its site shot up thanks to its Race Bolt game. As you can see, the peak happened on August 20th, the day he won gold in the 200m sprint, breaking the world record in the process. The other big star of the games was the American swimmer Michael Phelps, who wore a much talked about Speedo swimming suit. However, unlike Puma which experienced a sudden peak, UK traffic to Speedo website in increased steadily over the Olympic fortnight as Phelps racked up one gold medal after another.

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9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded

2008-08-14T09:00:00Z

We�??ve just updated our data on navigational / branded search in the UK for our new research report, Managing Your Brand Online. During May 2008, 88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were branded in nature, up from 81% in 2007 and 66% in 2005.

A quick refresher on the methodology that was used to create the above chart: we carried out an analysis of the top 2,000 search terms in the UK over the same 12 week period ending in May during 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, categorizing them into branded / navigational terms (e.g. �??bebo�??, �??ebay�??, �??bbc�?? �?? i.e. searches where there was a clear intention to search for a brand or reach a particular website) and non-navigational terms (e.g. �??flights to spain�??, �??free games�??, etc.). As we�??ve highlighted previously, this trend towards more navigational / branded search at the �??head�?? of search terms contrasts with more sophisticated generic search behaviour in the long tail.

Consumers are using search engines to navigate to recognized websites, so what are their favourite online brands? The table below lists the top 10 search terms in the UK for the 4 weeks ending August 9th. Facebook, which last month overtook eBay to become the third most visited website in the UK, is currently the most searched for brand in the UK. It is joined in the top 10 by four other social networking / web 2.0 related terms: �??bebo�??, �??youtube�??, �??you tube�?? and �??myspace�??. Combining the two YouTube related search terms the video sharing website would place higher than Bebo, which also correlates with this analysis.

Of the five remaining terms, three belong to retailers �?? �??ebay�??, �??argos�?? and �??amazon�?? �?? while the remaining two belong to the BBC. You�??ll notice that table above includes paid and organic rates for each of these terms, a additional feature that is included in our new Search Intelligence tool. The terms �??ebay�??, �??amazon�??, �??you tube�?? (although noticeably not �??youtube�??) are the only three in the top 10 that generate a significant proportion of paid search clicks, with the remaining seven relying almost completely on organic traffic.

The table below lists the top 10 paid search search terms (i.e. those that received the largest number of paid clicks from a search engine) over the same period. By stripping out the brands that rely primarily on organic search, this list is quite different from the one above. A combination of high overall search volume and a high paid rate pushes �??ebay�?? and �??you tube�?? to the top of the list, while Facebook, Bebo, the BBC and MySpace all fall out of the top 10.

Whereas there were only 3 retailers in the previous list, this time there are 7 retail related terms, with �??ebay uk�??, �??currys�??, �??john lewis�??, �??pc world�?? and �??paypal�?? entering the paid search top 10. This makes sense, when you consider the competitive nature of the retail market. Our analysis showed that retailers increased their rate of paid brand search to protect themselves from competitors and affiliates following the recent Google trademark changes. We will cover the paid search as part of next Tuesday�??s Can You Have a Happy Christmas During an Economic Downturn? webinar. You can register for this online seminar, which will start at 12:00 UK time on August 19, here.

If brand is more your thing, then you can download a copy of or new report, Managing Your Brand Online (written in conjunction with our colleagues at Experian Integrated Marketing) here. And, as always, we urge you to follow Hitwise UK on Twitter to keep up with the latest Internet data and trends.

Vouchers, price comparison and cash-back

2008-08-13T15:00:00Z

Last month we highlighted how the economic downturn has led to a growth in UK Internet traffic to websites in our Shopping and Classifieds - Rewards and Directories category. Historically this category has been dominated by price comparison sites such as Shopping.com, Ciao and PriceRunner, but over the last year voucher and cash-back sites have been increasing their market share too. In order to understand how much these new entrants have gained on the established players we created 3 custom categories consisting of the top 10 price comparison, voucher and cashback / rewards sites.

As you can see from the chart above, price comparison sites remain the larges sub-category of Rewards and directories, and have increased their market share of UK internet visits over the last 12 months following a gradual decline over the two previous years. The second largest sub category is Voucher sites, which has doubled in size over the last 12 months. The category receives twice as much traffic as Cachback / rewards websites, but less than a third of the amount that goes to Price comparison sites.

For retailers the important question is: which types of sites deliver the most traffic? In the chart above I�??ve illustrate the amount of upstream traffic that retailers receive from each of the three sub-categories, and you can see that it follows a very similar pattern to their market shares overall. However, looking at the downstream traffic from each sub-category it becomes clear that different types of reward sites are suited to different types of retailers. For example, price comparison sites deliver the most traffic to gadgets and white goods retailers, while voucher sites are better for entertainment and fashion.

We�??ll be looking into these trends in more depth during our retail webinar, Can You Have a Happy Christmas During an Economic Downturn?, next Tuesday (August 19th). This will start at 12:00 UK time and will cover a number of topics, including a summary of what happened last Christmas, a comparison between online and offline retailers, the impact of the economic downturn, as well as some predictions for this Christmas. There will also be a contribution from Experian Footfall. You can register for this free online seminar here.

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High street retailers winning online shopping battle

2008-08-06T10:30:00Z

High street retailers are pulling ahead of their online only counterparts when it comes to online shopping in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, the internet properties of the 100 largest online high street retailers in the UK, such as Argos, Next, and Marks and Spencer, received 19.3% more UK Internet visits during July 2008 than the 100 largest online only retailers, such as Amazon, Play.com and ASOS.

High street retailers overtook their online-only counterparts for the first time during December 2006, but quickly fell behind again for most of 2007. However, when the high street overtook again last Christmas, the gap was even greater than before and during 2008 the online only retailers have only managed to edge ahead during the quiet month of February. Given the 2.6% year-on-year decline in actual physical visits to retailers reported by Experian Footfall for July, it looks like high street retailers will be more reliant than ever on their online operations this Christmas.

This is a topic that we covered in our pre-Christmas retail seminar yesterday, and will be covering again in a follow up webinar at 12:00 on Tuesday 19th August. Mark the date in your diaries, and we�??ll provide a link for the actual event on the blog and via our Twitter feed in a few days. Just a quick note on methodology: the chart above is based on two custom categories of the top 100 high street and online-only retail websites. However, we have excluded websites from our Shopping and Classifieds - Auctions (i.e. no eBay) and Rewards and Directories categories.

Facebook overtakes eBay to become third most visited website

2008-08-05T16:00:00Z

Facebook became the third most visited website in the UK during July, overtaking eBay UK on the way. As the chart below illustrates, the social network received 2.75% of all UK Internet visits last month, equivalent to one in every 36. Facebook is also closing gap with Windows Live Mail (Hotmail), currently the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK.

A couple of caveats here, the first related to eBay UK. We categorize both eBay.com and eBay Motors separately, although 26% of people visiting the former end up at the UK site, while the latter currently receives 87% of its traffic from eBay UK. The second relates to Windows Live Mail, which hasn�??t suddenly shot up the rankings! In fact, the webmail service changed its URL structure last year and traffic to the new URL only normalized from the start of this year.

Both Facebook and eBay are addictive sites with loyal fans, so I thought it would be interesting to compare the two sites�?? demographic profiles. Facebook visitors are more likely to be female, are younger (it receives more visits from people aged between 18 and 34), and are more likely to live in London and the South East. Looking at the Experian Mosaic Lifestyle profiles for the 4 weeks ending 02/08/2008, Facebook experiences a swing in its favour from three groups: Urban Intelligence (E - �??Young, single and mostly well-educated, these people are cosmopolitan in tastes and liberal in attitudes�??), Symbols of Success (A �?? �??People with rewarding careers who live in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products�??) and Welfare Borderline (F �?? �??People who are struggling to achieve rewards and are mostly reliant on the council for accommodation and benefits�??).

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Fast moving search terms: British Gas fallout, Beatrix Potter and diamond geezers

2008-08-04T12:00:00Z

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were:

1. beatrix potter
2. diamond geezer
3. southern electric
4. play.com uk
5. bbc cricket
6. u switch
7. carol vorderman
8. racing post
9. currys uk
10. attheraces

�??beatrix potter�?? appearing at the top of list is another case of a Google Holiday Logo driving searches. Last week was the anniversary of the author and illustrator�??s birth, and result of her Google Doodle. Searches for �??diamond geezer�?? increased thanks to a notable appearance by the retailer on the BBC show Dragons�?? Den last week. Traffic to the site shot up 28 fold the day after the program was aired, while a blog with a similar name also experienced a jump in traffic as misguided searchers ended up at diamondgeezer.blogspot.com.

Last week�??s prices rises from British Gas were responsible for two of the terms on the list, �??southern electric�?? and �??u switch�??. Following its announcement, traffic to the Centrica owned company�??s homepage shot up last week, but it seems likely that a lot of those new visitors were not exactly satisfied customers. Our clickstream data shows that one in 10 people leaving the British Gas website last week went to a competitor, up from one in 15 the previous week. As you can see from the chart below, both the price comparison site uSwitch and British Gas competitor Southern Electric benefited from the increase in people looking for new energy deals.

Elsewhere in the top 10, the increase in searches for �??play.com.uk�?? and �??currys uk�?? were a result of sales at the retailers, while the jump in searches for �??racing post�?? and �??attheraces�?? point to an increase in traffic to gambling websites ahead of the Olympics. Searches for �??bbc cricket�?? were driven by the poor showing England�??s cricket term in the test series against South Africa. UK internet traffic to our Sports �?? Cricket category reached its highest level since England�??s Ashes win back in 2005, and it seems likely that level will be maintained following Michael Vaughan�??s emotional resignation as England captain over the weekend.

Another resignation, that of Carol Vorderman from Countdown, was responsible for the seventh placed term in the list. Looking at the search term suggestions list, the second placed term, �??myleene klass to replace carol vorderman�??, relates to the speculation surrounding who will replace the Ms Vordeman on the cult Channel 4 quiz show. This also contributed to the increase in traffic to betting sites last week.

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Movie & TV sequels: search behaviour and the retail gap

2008-07-29T10:00:00Z

Yesterday we highlighted the appearance of four Batman-related terms this week�??s top 10 fast moving search terms chart. A couple of weeks ago we posted about the relationship between searches for the recently released film Adulthood and its predecessor, Kidulthood. The Adulthood/Kidulthood analysis showed that the release of a new movie led to searches not just for the new film, but also for the earlier part of the series. Taking another look at the Batman search data, we noticed that the same trend was also true with regards to the Dark Knight and Batman Begins. As the table below illustrates, searches for the earlier film experienced a surge last week amongst all the hype for the new movie.

There is an old journalist adage: if the same happens twice it�??s a coincidence, but three times is a trend. Following this logic, I tested the theory on a third franchise �?? the Bourne movies, starring Matt Damon. As you can see from the chart below, searches for The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Ultimatum increased last year thanks to the success of The Bourne Supremacy. This was true both following the initial cinema release in summer and the DVD release around Christmas time.

So what are people looking for when they search for the earlier movie? Judging by the search behaviour for �??batman begins�??, the primary rational is to find a refresher / catch up for the original movies. The top 10 search term suggestions over the last 4 weeks included: �??batman begins torrent�??, �??watch batman begins online�??, �??watch batman begins�??, �??batman begins wiki�??, �??imdb batman begins�??, �??batman begins stream�?? and �??batman begins imdb�??.

The table below, which illustrates the top 10 destinations of people searching for �??batman�?? begins during the 4 weeks ending 26 July 2008, also confirms this trend. Over 70% of searches ended up at either the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) or Wikipedia, while there is only retail site on the list: Amazon.com. And the fact that it is the US rather than the UK version of the retailer shows that traffic came from historical search engine optimisation (SEO), rather than a targeted search marketing campaign.

Television programs now follow a similar pattern to movie franchises, with broadcasters creating a buzz around successive seasons of shows such as the Sopranos and Lost. One recent example is Dexter, the serial killer series that was first shown on the FX channel in the UK, then repeated on the ITV network, and is now in the middle of its second season back on FX. The chart below illustrates the lifecycle of searches for �??dexter�?? by showing which categories of websites people visited after searching for the term.

As you can see, the initial buzz last summer (1) sent searchers to Education sites (primarily Wikipedia), and this was followed by visits to Entertainment websites (the FX and ITV homepages, plus some traffic to YouTube) as the program gained popularity (2). By the time the second series came round, the hype again sent traffic to Wikipedia, but this time the networks were better positioned to pick up most of the traffic (4).

However, as with the film searches described above, the one industry that failed to capitalize on the buzz was Shopping and Classifieds. Even when the first series was released on DVD earlier this year (3), the marketing campaign drove more traffic to News and Media sites than retailers. It looks like there is a gap in the market. More effective retailer search marketing campaigns should generate more sales of both old and new products when the hype surrounding the latest movie or TV show reaches fever pitch.

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Fast moving search terms: Batman, Now Compilations, Festivals, Runescape

2008-07-28T11:00:00Z

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were:

1. now 70
2. christian bale
3. global gathering
4. heath ledger
5. batman
6. dark knight
7. womad
8. shipwrecked
9. runehq
10. hamfatter

Four of these terms �?? �??christian bale�??, �??heath ledger�??, �??batman�??. �??dark knight�?? �?? related to the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, which was released in the UK last weekend following a record breaking opening in the US. Christian Bale�??s arrest for assault has helped him overtake the late Heath Ledger in the search stakes, and the huge amount of press coverage surrounding the movie has certainly benefitted cinemas and other film industry websites. As you can see from the chart below, last week UK Internet traffic to our Entertainment �?? Movies category reached its highest level this year.

Music was the other big winner, also capturing four of the top 10 terms with �??now 70�??, �??global gathering�??, �??womad�?? and �??hamfatter�??. Last week we highlighted the jump in traffic to Hamfatter�??s website following their appearance on the BBC�??s Dragon�??s Den show. Global Gathering and Womad were music festivals that took place over the weekend. The homepages of both events experienced a jump in traffic last week, although in each case it was lower than last year.

�??now 70�??, the fastest moving search term last week, refers to the latest instalment of the long running Now That�??s What I Call Music! series of compilation albums. 62% of people searching for term ended up at a music retailer, with Play.com and HMV picking up the most traffic. Many of the searchers were looking for more info on the release, with �??now 70 track list�??, �??now 70 songs�??, �??now 70 songlist�?? and �??now 70 playlist�?? all appearing top 10 search term suggestions list.

�??now 70 cd�?? was fifth most popular search term containing the phrase �??now 70�??, but, more worrying for the music industry, �??now 70 torrent�?? was the second. However, even in this age of digital downloads and music piracy, it�??s comforting to know that the Now! brand remains as popular as ever. In fact, looking at the chart below, its popularity seems to be increasing. As you can see, I�??ve charted searches for the last 10 Now compilations (from 61 �?? 70) over the last three years, and this most recent release is the most popular yet.

Of the two remaining terms, �??shipwrecked�?? refers to the Channel 4 reality show. Searches for the program shot up last week, although they were lower than at the start of the series in April, as well as the peak last year. The term �??runehq�?? refers to Rune Headquarters, a fan site for the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Runescape. The fan site ranked 41st in our Entertainment �?? Games category last week, while the game�??s homepage has consistently ranked at number one for the last three years.

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Superbrands: demographics and lifestyle information

2008-07-23T15:59:10Z

The Centre for Brand Analysis released its list of the top Superbrands in the UK earlier this week, with Google taking the top spot after placing third last year. By looking at the profile of visitors to their homepages, we thought it would be interesting to try and understand the demographics of the UK�??s favourite brands.

While we can�??t measure how �??sexy�?? these brands are, we can measure which ones appeal most to the different sexes. As you can see from the chart below, five of the top 10 are more popular with women, and five with men. The most female-friendly brands are Nike and Royal Doulton. However here are no surprises regarding the most male-friendly products: cars (BMW, Mercedes Benz), gadgets (Sony), and tools (Bosch). Technology and media brands (Google, Microsoft and the BBC) are more gender neutral, while British Airways is the most equal of the lot.

Looking at the age-profile of visitor�??s the Superbrands�?? homepages, the results are perhaps a little more surprising. Starting with the ladies�?? favourites, you would expect Royal Doulton to be popular with silver surfers. However, it is also as popular with younger Internet users as Nike; it�??s middle-aged people that seem least keen on expensive china. Elsewhere Mercedes fans are on average older than BMW ones, but Mercedes wins out with the 18-24 year olds. Google�??s and Microsoft�??s visitors have a similar age profile, but BBC users are older than both.

One thing that you notice about these top 10 brands is that they skew towards the up-market / aspirational, particularly the ones that actually make things, e.g. BMW, Mercedes Benz and Royal Doulton. Looking at the Experian Mosaic lifestyle groups that most over-index with these brands backs this up. Seven of the 10 (BBC, BMW, Bosch, British Airways, Google, Mercedes Benz and Royal Doulton) were best represented within the most affluent Mosaic lifestyle group, Symbols of Success �?? defined as �??people with rewarding careers who live in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products�??. Nike and Sony were most over represented amongst Happy Families (�??families with focus on career and home, mostly younger age groups now raising children�??), while for Microsoft it was Blue Collar Enterprise ('people who though not well-educated are practical and enterprising and may well have exercised their right to buy�??).

Price comparison traffic up 37% thanks to economic downturn

2008-07-15T11:30:00Z

With prices rising and the credit crunch biting, consumers are taking more time to find the best deals online. Last week we contributed to an Experian Footfall report which highlighted the downturn on the high street and in out of town shopping centres, compared with the increase in online retail traffic. Although the high fuel prices are clearly contributing to this trend, the major benefit that internet shopping has over bricks and mortar is the ease of browsing multiple outlets to find the cheapest price. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds: Rewards and Directories category - which consists primarily of price comparison engines, affiliates and voucher sites - has increased by 37% over the last 12 months.

Rewards and Directories sites sent over half of their downstream traffic to other retailers in June. As the table below illustrates, the biggest beneficiaries were sites within our Department Stores and Appliances and Electronics retail sub-sectors. Over the last three months the category has received traffic from 929,000 distinct search terms, illustrating the variety of goods included within their systems. Aside from the most popular price comparison brands and retailer names (e.g. �??ebay�??, �??tesco�??, �??argos�??), the top product searches refer to gadgets, with �??wii fit�??, �??wii fit in stock�?? and �??mobile phone reviews�?? currently the most popular. A clear growth area is fashion: the amount of traffic the category sends to Apparel and Accessories retailers has increased by 60% over the last year, and �??primark�?? is now the second most popular retail brand name sending the category traffic.

One of the interesting data points in the table above is the amount of traffic that Rewards and Directories sites send to their competitors: 13.4%. This implies that UK consumers are not only using price comparison sites to check prices, but actually browsing multiple price comparison sites for the find the best deal. And they seem to stick what they know: the table below contains the top 10 Rewards and Directory sites in June, a list that hasn�??t changed much during the last few months of market growth.

Apple iPhone, O2 and the purchasing cycle

2008-07-08T13:30:00Z

O2 started taking orders for Apple�??s new 3G iPhone yesterday, and as you would expect it experienced a spike in traffic to both its homepage and online shop. Unfortunately the surge in demand caused the carrier�??s site to crash, although it is now back online. However, O2 is already out of iPhones, and its site is carrying a message requesting customers come back on July 10th to place their order. Carphone Warehouse, which also experienced an increase in traffic yesterday, has a similar message up on its site.

Looking at the chart above, its interesting to see how yesterday�??s surge in traffic compares with the one last month (when the new mobile phone was announced). Last time both O2 and Apple experienced an increase in traffic, but yesterday traffic to the manufacturer�??s site hardly increased at all.

This nicely illustrates how consumer behaviour changes between the information gathering stage and the point of purchase. During the June peak, 22.4% of people searching for iPhone went to Apple�??s official iPhone site, while 14.0% went to www.o2.co.uk. This time, O2 has taken the top spot, with 23.5% of traffic, compared with Apple�??s 18.7%. That said, consumers still need a bit of nudge: 90% of O2's traffic from the term 'iphone' comes from paid search, up from 50% last month.

Asos.com: growth and demographics

2008-07-02T10:30:00Z

Internet clothing retailer Asos.com seems to have shrugged off the economic downturn by yesterday announcing that it had doubled sales over the last 3 months. Following our analysis of the rapidly growing UK online fashion market last week, this didn�??t come as a huge surprise to us. We�??ve been tracking Asos for a while: it regularly appears on the IMRG �?? Hitwise Hot Shops List, and is now the second most visited retailer in our Apparel and Accessories category (behind Next, but ahead of River Island, TopShop and New Look). As the chart below illustrates, traffic to Asos.com has doubled over the last 12 months.

Asos, which originally stood for As Seen On Screen, specialises in affordable versions of celebrity fashions �?? the gladiator sandals as worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the Sex and the City movie are a current favourite. However, while the site�??s core customer base is younger women, one of the reasons for its success over the last year has been its ability to appeal to older customers. Looking at our demographic data for the site during June this year and last, you can see that there has been noticeable shift to older visitors. As the chart below illustrates, 18 �?? 34 olds are still the core audience but the proportion of visitors from the 35+ age group has increased from just under a third to just over a half between 2007 and 2008.

Looking at the Experian Mosaic lifestyle data, it�??s interesting to note that this doesn�??t necessarily equate to a move �??upmarket�?? so much as move into the mainstream. Asos�??s clothes are relatively cheap, but a year ago the most over-represented Mosaic group visiting the site was Happy Families, an affluent group defined as �??families with a focus on career and home, mostly younger age groups now raising children�??. Looking at the most recent Mosaic data, the thing jumps out now is that no one individual Mosaic group is particularly over represented anymore. This implies that the site�??s customer base now broadly represents the online population as a whole �?? i.e. the mainstream.

Summer sales and email marketing

2008-07-01T12:00:00Z

The summer sales are now in full swing, as you�??ve probably noticed when walking around your local shopping centre / high street. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet users continue to look for a bargain. Searches for both the singular and plural terms �??sale�?? and �??sales�?? shot up to their highest level since the Christmas / New Year shopping season last week.

I�??ve received some emails from online retailers promoting their sales, but fewer than I expected given the economic conditions. The amount of traffic that websites in our Shopping and Classifieds category received from Email Services increased slightly last week to 4.8%, but this number was still lower than two weeks before. Given that the search data highlights an appetite for online sales, I�??m surprised that retailers are not engaging in more active outbound email campaigns. The chart below shows that three retailers �?? Play.com, John Lewis, and Matalan �?? all received a considerable boost in traffic last week thanks to email campaigns.

Taking the top 3 webmail providers in the UK �?? Microsoft Hotmail / Live Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail / Google Mail �?? it�??s interesting to note that one provider in particular seems to be more effective at delivering traffic to retailers than the other two. As the chart below illustrates, Yahoo! UK Mail consistently sends more of its traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds category. Last 13.4% of Yahoo! UK Mail�??s downstream traffic went to retail websites, noticeably more than both Gmail (10.5%) and Hotmail (9.6%).

Online fashion retail still growing despite high street slowdown

2008-06-26T13:00:00Z

The CBI has issued a report claiming that clothing retailers have just experienced their worst month for quarter of a century. I can only assume that this fall in sales must be down to an underperforming high street, because the online fashion industry is booming. Our Apparel and Accessories category is currently the fourth largest retail sub sector (behind Auctions, Department Stores, and Rewards and Directories), accounting for almost 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits to an online retailer. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to fashion retailers has shot up over the last three years.

One of the reasons for this growth relative to other etailers is that it took the fashion industry a while to realize how to successfully sell online (remember boo.com?). One important source of traffic is social networks, and in May 2008 these accounted for 6.37% of upstream traffic to websites in our Apparel and Accessories category. This makes sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo a more important source of traffic than Lifestyle �?? Fashion websites (5.13%). In fact, only Auctions sites now receive more traffic from social networks than fashion retailers. As the chart below illustrates, the amount for downstream traffic that our Social Networking and Forums category sends to Apparel and Accessories retailers has more than doubled over the last three years, overtaking department stores and gadget and entertainment retailers on the way.

22% increase in paid brand search rates following Google�??s trademark changes

2008-06-19T13:00:00Z

The top online brands in the UK have significantly increased their rate of paid brand search following the recent changes to Google�??s trademark policy on May 5th. Before Google�??s changes took effect (4 weeks ending 12/04/2008), 9.2% of the search traffic that the top 100 online brands in the UK received from their top brand term came via a paid listing on a search engine. However for the his figure went up to 11.2% - equivalent to an increase of 22% - during the first four weeks after the changes took effect (4 weeks ending 31/05/2008).

As the chart above illustrates, three of the four major industries that we analyzed have increased their rates of paid brand search. Most drastically, the top travel brands in the UK have increased their paid brand search rate from 18.4% to 26.6%, the largest increase of any sector. The retail industry also saw a significant increase in paid brand search activity from 11.3% to 16.2%, despite a number of high profile �??gentleman�??s agreements�?? amongst some of the largest names in the industry who had agreed not to bid on each other�??s brands terms. The telecoms industry also experienced an increase, although there was a moderate decrease from 4.8% to 4.7% amongst the UK�??s major banks.

When Google announced the changes, many assumed the amount of Internet search traffic that brand owners receive from searches for their own trademarked brand terms would decrease because competitors and affiliates could now bid on these terms. Indeed our own analysis of the differences between the UK and US markets seemed to point in that direction. In fact, there was only a tiny decrease - from 91.8% to 91.3% - in traffic to brand owners�?? websites from searches for their own brand names following the changes.

So, UK Internet users have stayed loyal to their favourite brands, but at what price to the brand owners? It seems that the top brands in the UK have chosen to increase paid search activity on their own brand terms rather than lose traffic to competitors or affiliates. Obviously what happened during the first month may not be representative of what will happen on the long term. We�??ll be keeping an eye on how this pans and will issue updates if we see any major changes. In the meantime, last week I presented a webinar describing the impact in more depth, and you can listen to a recording here.

Sainsbury�??s website downtime analysis

2008-06-19T11:00:00Z

Yesterday the BBC reported that Sainsbury�??s had suspended its online grocery store, and looking at the site this morning that still seems to be the case. One of the great things about Hitwise�??s daily data is that we are able to track the impact of such changes in almost real time. The chart below illustrates daily internet visits to two Sainsbury�??s websites this year �?? the main homepage and grocery site.

This example seems to prove that there is indeed such a thing as bad publicity. The media coverage has clearly had an impact: the Sainsbury�??s story was one of the most read on the BBC News website yesterday, and news.bbc.co.uk was the third ranked site sending traffic to www.sainsbury.co.uk as a result. Consequently the homepage experienced a surge in traffic (although average visits time fell to a six week low), but at the same time the grocery-specific site saw its traffic decline by a similar amount.

Perhaps even more worrying for Sainsbury�??s, the top downstream site visited after their homepage yesterday was Tesco. As the table below illustrates, 8.36% of people visiting the supermarket yesterday went to its arch-rival afterwards, while a further 1.38% went to Asda

Of course, you would expect some traffic like this between competitors in the supermarket sector, but in this case it is clear that Sainsbury�??s is suffering higher than average �??leakage�?? to its competitors. The table below illustrates the same downstream traffic from Sainsbury�??s, but for last week rather than yesterday. It usually only sends 1.66% of its downstream traffic to Tesco, not 8.36%, while Asda doesn�??t even appear in the top 20. It�??s also noticeable that amount of traffic Sainsbury�??s sent to its other stores fell yesterday as a result of the downtime.

Euro 2008 and British Football fans

2008-06-11T14:00:00Z

Most of the rest of Europe is in the grip or football fever, but how excited is the UK considering that none of the home nations are taking part? �??euro 2008�?? was the most popular search term sending traffic to websites in our Sports �?? Football category last week, overtaking the usual club favourites such as �??arsenal�??, �??man utd�?? and �??liverpool fc�??. In addition, �??euro2008�?? was the fastest moving search term in our Sports category last week, while �??euro 08�??, �??fifa world rankings�??, �??uefa euro 2008�?? and �??fantasy euro 2008�?? were all included in the top 10.

However, comparing the volume of searches for �??euro 2008�?? with the volume of searches for �??world cup�?? in 2006 (when England were taking part) provides a stark contrast. As the chart below illustrates, there were 151% more searches for �??world cup�?? during the opening weekend in 2006 than for �??euro 2008�?? last week.

Football websites are also experiencing less traffic when compared with the World Cup tow years ago, but the differential is much less dramatic than with the search data As the chart below illustrates, sites in our Football category are more reliant on the domestic season for their peaks and troughs than on international tournaments. As you can see, the start of the season and January transfer window are the biggest traffic drivers, along with big matches and key victories, such as Manchester United winning the Premier / Champions League double.

Interestingly, sports retailers don�??t seem to be suffering as predicted. In fact, as the chart above illustrates, UK Internet traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds �?? Sport and Fitness category recently reached an all time high recently, and has been on an upward trend since Christmas. Another transactional website that has benefited is Austrian Airlines, which last week experienced its highest ever level of UK traffic. Over the last 2 weeks it has moved up from being the 67th most visited website in our Commercial Airlines category to the 37th. Last week it received 42% more traffic than Swiss, the first time that the Austrian flag carrier has received more traffic than its co-host�??s since April 2006.

One reason for this preference for Austria over Switzerland from British football fans may be the much talked about Polish factor. All of Poland�??s group matches will be taking place in Austria, so it seems likely that a lot of UK-based Poles will be looking for flights to Vienna and Klagenfurt. There certainly seems to be a lot of Internet discussion from the Polish community in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to social network Nasza Klasa �?? currently the most popular Polish website in the UK �?? reached an all time high last week.

iPhone website reaches a new high as rumour mill goes into overdrive

2008-06-09T14:00:00Z

Apple is expected to launch a new version of its iPhone at the Apple World Wide Developers' Conference in San Francisco this afternoon (UK time). As with all such events, the speculation amongst Apple fans and foes has almost reached fever pitch. Last week UK Internet visits to the iPhone website reached a new high. In fact, there were over twice the number of visits last week than during any of previous peaks, including the initial announcement, UK launch and recent price cut.

Looking at the latest search term suggestions report for �??iphone�??, 4 of the top 10 entries relate to an updated version: �??new iphone�??, �??3g iphone�??, iphone 3g�?? and �??iphone 2�??. As the second chart below the table illustrates, the volume searches for each of these terms have increased significantly over the last few weeks.

The biggest recipients of traffic from these searches to date have been news and blog sites, which is understandable when you consider that no product has actually yet been announced, and everything at this point is still speculation. The Times newspaper has optimised itself well for these terms, and was the top recipient of (100% organic) traffic for both �??3g iphone�?? and �??new iphone�??. Interestingly, most of the traffic from the former went to the technology section, while the latter term performed better for the business section.

Update (Tuesday 10 June): As anticipated, Steve Jobs did indeed unveil a new 3G iPhone yesterday. And as predicted, the iPhone site shot up the ranking again. Yesterday it reached a new peak and was the 290th most visited site in the UK overall.

Of course, the blogosphere loved this story and yesterday blogs sent more traffic to the iPhone site than the traditional IT media. The three blogs sending most traffic were Mac Rumors, Endgadget and The Unoffical Apple Weblog, while the BBC was the highest ranked traditional media site.

Online vouchers prove popular in bargain-hungry Britain

2008-06-06T09:00:00Z

With the economy slowing and prices rising, everyone is on the lookout for a bargain. Vouchers have become a popular way of promoting discounts, particularly around Christmas time. In fact, they have become some popular that price sensitive shoppers are looking for them in increasing numbers. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet searches for �??vouchers�?? have shot up recently, having increased 12-fold over the last three years

We recorded almost 10,000 variations on the search term �??vouchers�?? over the last 12 weeks. The table below illustrates the top 10 suggestions, which includes �??discount vouchers�??, �??money off vouchers�?? and �??free vouchers�??. Of course, in addition to generic vouchers, this list also includes searches for popular shop-specific vouchers for the likes of Tesco. As we highlighted in December, viral voucher campaigns can be very successful ways for retailers to drive traffic to their sites.

As you would expect, a number of voucher aggregation / affiliate sites have sprung up to meet the rising demand for vouchers. The chart below illustrates the growth of top 5 sites, with MyVoucherCodes and VoucherCodes currently the two clear leaders. The combined market share of these five sites has increased almost five fold over the last year.

Looking at the clickstream data, voucher sites sent 62.4% of their traffic to Shopping and Classifieds sites last month. Of this 24.3% went to our Rewards and Directories category, which implies that people are browsing multiple voucher websites to find the best deals. The top 3 retail sub-categories receiving traffic from voucher sites in May were Department Stores, Apparel and Accessories, and Appliances and Electronics. Asda Electricals is currently the individual retailer receiving most traffic from voucher sites, and they accounted for 2.7% of its upstream traffic last month. MyVoucherCodes was the sixth site in its upstream clickstream, making it the highest ranked non-Asda or Google site.

SATC more popular in UK than USA

2008-05-27T12:00:00Z

The decision to hold the world premiere of the new Sex and the City movie in London has led to a surge in online searches in the UK. American interest in the film is yet to take off, although this may change following the US premiere, which takes place in New York City today. Following the London premiere of the movie on May 12, UK Internet searches for �??sex and the city�?? increased by 223%. For the week ending May 17 there were over seven times the proportion of searches for the term in the UK compared with the USA.

The official Sex and the City movie homepage was the fourth most visited website dedicated to an individual film in the UK last week, although it ranked behind Indiana Jones at number one. Marketing campaigns on Facebook (�??Which Sex and the City Character Are You?�?? application and a fan page) and Handbag.com (trailer video on the front page) obviously also successful. After Google UK, they were the second and third largest sources of traffic to the film�??s homepage last week.

The hype surrounding Sex and the City also seems to have also benefited Manolo Blahnik, the high-end shoe designer preferred by the lead character Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie and TV series. US Internet traffic to www.manoloblahnik.com reached its highest ever peak this year during the week ending May 10, while UK visits to the site have been climbing dramatically over the last month and reached their highest ever peak the week before last.

Social networking and online shopping bigger in rural areas

2008-05-22T16:41:21Z

This morning I noticed this article from the BBC highlighting a new Ofcom report which concluded that UK broadband penetration is higher in rural than urban areas. Or, as The Register put it, �??Broadband bumpkins overtake city surfers�??. Originally hailing from bumpkin country myself, this doesn�??t surprise me at all. Fast internet access allows rural dwellers to access many of the services previously only available to their urban counterparts. A case in point is shopping �?? the arrival of online retail means that anyone with an internet connection now has access to an even wider range of goods than those available on Oxford Street.

The chart below illustrates the representation of visits to our Shopping and Classifieds category relative to the online population as a whole for the last 4 weeks. As you can see, Londoners are the least likely to visit an online retailer, while the areas that over-index most within the category are Wales and the South West.

A similar picture also emerges when it comes to social networking. This second map illustrates the representation of visitors to our Social Networking and Forums category relative to the online population. London is again the most under-represented region, while Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are all over-represented. As we highlighted in our report, The Impact of Social Networking in the UK, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo et al are certainly not just a metropolitan media obsession.

Game cheats: GTA4, Mario Kart Wii and Halo 3

2008-05-20T08:00:00Z

Following the recent launches of two popular video games, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA4) and Nintendo's Mario Kart Wii, we noticed an interesting search pattern. As you can see from the chart below, searches for the game itself peak during launch week, while searches for game cheats take off a week later

Looking a bit further back, we can see that this pattern is well established. The chart below illustrates searches for 3 key terms related to Halo 3, which was launched in September last year. The basic term �??halo 3�?? is always the most popular and peaks during launch week, as does �??halo 3 review�??. Again, �??halo 3 cheats�?? takes off a week after, but the chart also shows the longevity of the three terms. It�??s interesting to see that while �??halo 3 review�?? drops off the radar after just a few weeks, the volume of searches for �??halo 3 cheats�?? has remained significant since, occasionally almost catching up with searches for the basic term �??halo 3�??.

So, if game cheat searches are so popular, where are these searchers going? The table below lists the top destinations over the last 4 weeks for people searching for the terms �??gta4�?? and �??gta4 cheats�??, and as you can see, they are very different. Three in ten people searching for the basic game title are ending up at the official website of Rockstar Games (the publisher of GT4), while a further 20% are ending up at a popular fansite, www.gta4.net. Other popular destinations include Wikipedia and YouTube, plus gaming sites and retailers such as Gamespot UK and Play.com.

On the other hand, people searching for �??gta4 cheats�?? are much more likely to end up at a specialist cheat site such as GTA IV Cheats or Cheat Genius, which combined account for over half of all visits from the term. With the exception of Gamespot UK, the sites receiving most traffic from the term �??gta4�?? do less well from �??gta4 cheats�??. Interestingly, 99%+ of search traffic to the top 2 cheat sites comes from organic rather than paid search, implying that this would be a good area to develop content for search engine optimization (SEO). Paid search may not prove such a cost effective option, however, as most of the people searching for cheats will have already purchased the game.

I assumed that some of these cheat sites would be affiliates, sending lots of traffic to retailers and elsewhere. In fact, 48% of people visiting GTA IV cheats last week visited a website from our Blogs and Personal Websites category afterwards, while a further 28% visited an Entertainment �?? Games site, many of which were other cheat sites. However, Cheat Genius - which is more a more generic cheat site �?? does seem to have stronger commercial relationships in place. The site is sponsored by Zango, a �??premium content access tool, paid for by advertising�??, and 22% of people visiting Cheat Genius last week went to Zango�??s website afterwards.

Freesat proves popular online

2008-05-14T12:00:00Z

The launch of Freesat, the free satellite TV service provided by the BBC and ITV in the UK, proved popular with online consumers during its launch week. UK Internet traffic to www.freesat.co.uk, the service�??s online homepage, increased by 627% between the weeks ending May 3rd and May 10th, while UK Internet searches for the term �??freesat�?? increased by 752% over the same period, making it the fastest moving search term in the UK last week.

There were 79% more searches for the term �??freesat�?? than the term �??sky�?? during the week ending May 10th. However, this is to be expected for a new product that has received a lot of media attention �?? over a fifth of Internet traffic to Freesat�??s website came from news and media sites during its launch period. As the chart below illustrates, Sky�??s homepage still received 250% more internet visits that www.freesat.co.uk.

However, the types of visitors that each site is attracting are quite different. Two thirds of visitors to www.sky.com are aged 45 or under, whereas for Freesat the comparable figure is 43%. Freesat appeals to an older audience: 43% of visitors to its website last week were aged 55 and over, compared with just 20% for Sky. Freesat also appeals more to people living in rural areas such as the South West, but is less popular than Sky in larger cities, particularly in London and the North West.

The interest in Freesat also helped boost traffic to electronics retailers and manufacturers last week. 35% of people visiting the Freesat website last week chose to visit a retailer afterwards, while a further 10% went to electronics manufacturers�?? websites. Argos received the most traffic of any retailer from Freesat, accounting for 16% of all downstream visits from www.freesat.co.uk. The site that received the second largest amount of traffic from www.freesat.co.uk was Humax, the British electronics manufacturer that is producing one of the Freesat set top boxes. Freesat accounted for 44% of Humax�??s traffic last week, helping increase visit to the site by 467%.

Lawnmowers and BBQs: UK searchers celebrate the sunshine!

2008-05-12T10:25:29Z

What a difference the weather can make, particularly after last year�??s miserable summer! A week of sunshine has lifted the spirits of everyone in the UK, and also had an impact on their internet searching and shopping habits. As the graph below illustrates, searches for summer essentials �?? in this case BBQs and lawnmowers �?? shot up last week. In fact, searches for �??bbq�?? and �??lawn mower�?? have already reached a higher peak this year than at any point last summer

With these sudden surges in searches for particular terms, it�??s always interesting to see who benefits. As you can see from the table below, for the terms �??bbq�?? and �??lawn mower�?? it has primarily been smaller niche and specialist sites that picked up traffic, particularly in the in the BBQ market. Traffic from searches for �??bbq�?? was consolidated into fewer hands, although that is primarily a result of aggressive paid search tactics. For example, www.justlawnmowers.co.uk paid for 28% of its traffic from the term �??lawnmowers�?? and 47% from �??lawn mowers�??; whereas Flaming Barbecues paid for 95% of its traffic from �??bbq�?? and 87% from �??barbeque�??.

Another interesting lesson from this surge is the importance of bidding or optimizing for all variations and spellings / misspellings of popular terms. The table below illustrates the top 10 terms currently sending traffic to Flaming Barbecues. As you can see, it is picking up traffic from a variety of terms, including; �??bbq�??, �??gas bbq�??, �??barbeques�??, �??barbecues�??, �??barbeque�?? and �??bbqs�??. And while much of this traffic is paid, Flaming Barbecues is also picking up significant organic traffic from most of these variations.

Mobile broadband searches increasing

2008-05-08T13:01:31Z

It�??s hard to open a newspaper at the moment without seeing an advert for mobile broadband services - from both carriers, such as Three, Vodafone and T-Mobile, and independent retailers such as Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U. The advertising seems to have worked at increasing awareness: as you can see from the chart below, searches for the term �??mobile broadband�?? have increased significantly over the last six months.

It�??s interesting to compare the volume of searches for �??mobile broadband�?? with those for the more generic term �??broadband�??. Searches for the latter have been declining since January, while searches for the former have been increasing. Of course, the broader term �??broadband�?? remains more popular, particularly when you look at the breadth of terms. For example, for the 4 weeks ending May 3rd, there were 10, 736 searches containing the term �??broadband�??, whereas there were only 923 containing �??mobile broadband�??. There is some double counting here - all of those 923 �??mobile broadband�?? terms are also included in the �??broadband�?? number. But, even after they are taken out, there are still 9.813 non-mobile �??broadband�?? terms, over 10 times the number of �??mobile broadband�?? terms.

Search term breadth is also a good way of measuring the maturity of a term. The more familiar people are with a word or phrase, the wider the variety of terms they use to search for it - at least until the popularity decrease. Comparing the breadth of searches for �??mobile broadband�?? now with 6 months ago, it�??s clear that the phrase is becoming more familiar and people are searching on a wider variety of �??mobile broadband�?? terms. For the 4 weeks ending November 3rd 2007 there were 427 searches containing �??mobile broadband�??, but this figure has now more than doubled to 923. Another sign of maturity for a popular generic term such as �??mobile broadband�?? is that affiliates and comparison sites are picking up a significant amount of traffic from the term. As you can see from the table below, almost half of traffic from people searching for �??mobile broadband�?? for the 4 weeks ending May 3rd went to these types of sites.

It�??s also interesting to see how these affiliates are picking up traffic from the term. Broadband Store, currently top of the rankings, is a generalist broadband site and is currently bidding heavily on the term: 96.9% of its �??mobile boradband�?? traffic came from paid search over the last 4 weeks. On the other hand, specialist site Mobile Broadband Genie �?? currently second in the rankings �?? has clearly optimized itself for the term. Just 0.7% of its �??mobile broadband�?? traffic came from paid search over the last 4 weeks. The site's overall paid search rate is just 3%, and its top 10 searches include key terms such as �??compare mobile broadband�?? and �??best mobile broadband�??, as well a number of branded terms.

Branded search is currently very important in the mobile broadband market, especially considering Google�??s recent trademark changes in the UK. We looked at the top 100 search terms for the last 4 weeks containing the phrase �??mobile broadband�??, and categorized them into 5 categories. The chart below illustrates the volume of searches for each of these 5 categories and, as you can see, just over a third of search volume for these top 100 terms was branded in nature. Just under a half were for generic terms such as �??mobile broadband�??, �??3g mobile broadband�?? and �??mobile broadband uk�??.

The other categories are also interesting. The most popular price / comparison searches related to �??pay as you go�??, �??compare�?? and �??review(s)�??, and these are generally increasing. On the other hand, the number of technical terms - which include terms such as �??coverage�??, �??laptop�?? and �??usb�?? - is on the decline, perhaps a reflection of the maturity of the market. The smallest category relates to overseas usage, but again these are new terms that have emerged over the last few months. There were 5 such terms within the top 100, including �??mobile broadband france�??, �??mobile broadband abroad�?? and �??mobile broadband spain�??.

Apple iPhone UK price drop

2008-04-21T08:00:00Z

Last week Apple and 02 announced that they had cut the price of the 8GB iPhone by £100 in the UK until June 1st. As always with Apple, the announcement generated a huge amount of media interest �?? including speculation that the launch of a 3G iPhone is now imminent. �??iphone�?? was the seventh fastest moving search term sending traffic to our News and Media category last week, and searches for the term reached their highest peak this year as a result.

So, aside from news sites and blogs, who benefited from this surge in interest? The chart below lists the top 3 websites receiving most traffic from searches for �??iphone�?? during the 4 weeks ending 19 April. As you would expect, these are the 3 authorised sellers of the mobile phone in the UK (Apple, O2, and Carphone Warehouse) - although their ranking has changed since the launch last year, with Apple�??s iPhone site overtaking the O2 Shop to gain the top spot.

In order to analyse the specific impact of the price drop and resultant search traffic, we collected the data illustrated in the table below. All three sites experienced an increase in both their overall market share and the amount of traffic that they received from search engines last week, with Apple the big winner in both cases. However, despite the media interest, none of the sites saw an increased in traffic from our News and Media category. It seems that people read or hear about the news and then conduct a search which sends them to a retail site, rather than simply following links / adverts from a news page to a retailer.

Google Book Search on the rise

2008-04-15T13:00:00Z

Recently, Google announced that it has released an API which enables websites to link to the books within its Google Book Search functionality. This allows users to preview the book in question in a similar way to the �??search inside�?? feature used by Amazon. Over the last four weeks, Internet visits to books.google.co.uk have increased by 73% as result of this change, and overall visits to the site have trebled year-on-year. The volume of page impressions has also increased by 24% since the beginning of March.

It is interesting to note that until recently Internet users in the UK were visiting both books.google.com and books.google.co.uk properties of Google Book Search, with each site capturing a similar amount of traffic over the year. However, since the API launch, visits to the .co.uk property have increased steadily, whilst visits to the .com property have decreased.

Google Book Search UK is also becoming less reliant on Google search properties for traffic, with 23.9% less upstream traffic from www.google.co.uk year-on-year. At the same time, visits from Google Scholar have increased, and the site has become the second largest driver of upstream traffic after Google UK. This shift in sources of traffic may also be responsible for the changing demographic profile for the website. Visits from users within the 55+ age bracket have increased by 53% since Oct 2007, while at the same time visits from the 35-44 age bracket have decreased by 45%.

Not all books featured with Google Book Search are available to read, and a number of books have a summary and links to online book sellers. This is having an increasing impact on the online book shopping industry, with traffic from the website to the Shopping & Classified �?? Books category increasing four-fold since April 07. Amazon UK is benefitting the most: it is the number one downstream website from Google Book Search, capturing one in twenty visits last week.

Top 10 UK search terms: social networks dominate the list

2008-04-14T16:00:00Z

We have just announced the winners of the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards 2007, so congratulations to all of the websites that placed within their industry top 10. In addition to the top websites, we also announced the top 10 most searched for brands of 2007, and the results make for interesting reading.

As you can see from the table above, there were four new entrants into the top this 10 year (highlighted in green). That all four of these terms are the brand names of social networks / Web 2.0 sites nicely illustrates how significant social networking has become in the UK. Half of the 10 most searched for terms in the UK last year �?? �??bebo�??, �??youtube�??, �??facebook�??, �??myspace�?? and �??you tube�?? came from this sector, and the volume of searches for the top terms continues to grow.

Looking at the rest of the list, �??ebay�?? remains at the top, but other retail-related terms have fallen down the rankings: �??argos�?? and �??amazon�?? remain in the top 10, albeit placed lower, while �??easyjet�??, �??autotrader�?? and �??ebay uk�?? have all dropped out. "Old" media has also suffered, with �??bbc�?? falling three places and �??cbbc�?? departing the top 10. However, it�??ll be interesting to see if the continuing popularity of the Beeb�??s "new" media iPlayer service leads to a revival in the 2008 list.

Update: Jack Schofield at the Guardian picked up on our list of top websites in his blog, and the comments section contains some interesting debate.

UK DIY and Screwfix

2008-04-03T13:00:00Z

Apparently, Good Friday is the busiest DIY day of the year, so I wasn�??t surprised to see that traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds: House and Garden category increased noticeably during the Easter week. Slightly more unexpected, however, is the growth that the sector has experienced over the last three years. As the chart below illustrates, the House and Garden category has been gradually increasing its share of all UK Internet visits over this period, and during Eater it was the sixth largest of our 17 retail sub-categories.

Despite IKEA being the third largest site, the Shopping and Classifieds - House and Garden category is dominated by the large DIY stores. These accounted for five of the top 10 sites over Easter, including B&Q at number one. The Experian Mosaic lifestyle group that over-indexes most with the category is Rural Isolation, defined as �??people living in rural areas where country life has not been influenced by urban consumption patterns�??. As you would expect, the largest age group visiting these sites is the over 55s, who account for over a quarter of all visitors to the category. House and Garden sites are slightly more popular amongst women that men, with females accounting for 51.8% of visitors to the category during the 4 weeks ending 15/03/2008.

One House and Garden store that has done particularly well online over the last 12 month is Screwfix Direct, currently the second most visited site in category. It has increased its share of UK Internet visits by 20% since last Easter, and a recent above the line (ATL) advertising campaign has led to an increase in searches for its brand (as the chart below illustrates).

However, brand strength does not seem to have been the only driver of Screwfix�??s online growth. Despite being the second most popular site in the sector, �??srewfix�?? is only the fourth most popular search term sending traffic to our Shopping and Classified - House and Garden category, and the site is less reliant on branded search than most of its competitors. As the table below illustrates, Screwfix receives traffic from a larger variety of search terms than its main competitors.

One of the reasons for this long tail is TalkScrewfix, a part of the site that contains forums such as Builders�?? Talk and Plumbers�?? Talk. These are extremely popular: at the time of writing they contain over 650,000 postings on 70,000 topics. This level of content serves two purposes for a site like Screwfix. Firstly, as we described in our recent webinar, it forms the basis for an effective SEO strategy. Indeed, the top three search engines sending traffic to Screwfix (Google�??s UK and US properties, plus Yahoo! UK & Ireland), all over index in terms of the amount of new visitors they send to the site.

The second benefit is that the content forms the basis of a community of loyal users that return to the site. As we mentioned in our Social Networking report, the number of older social network users is on the rise, and sites such as TalkSrewfix are where they�??re going. Screwfix receives 5.4% of its upstream traffic from Email services, over twice the industry average, implying that users are emailing tips and links to friends and colleagues. The community aspect also helps with site stickiness: last week, 13.8% of people went from Screwfix to competitor site, compared to 22.5% for the industry as a whole.

Retail price index and organic food

2008-03-20T10:00:00Z

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has just announced the latest round of changes to the basket of goods it uses to calculate the UK retail price index (RPI). In addition to providing inflation figures, the make up of the RPI also provides an interesting insight into changes in UK consumer behaviour Of course, another interesting source of data on consumer spending patterns is our very own search data, so I thought I�??d compare the ONS�??s list of �??hot and not�?? products with our own.

First up: the fast moving world of gadgets. The 650 goods in the basket now include a variety of digital storage devices, ranging from memory sticks and cards to MP3 players and mobile phones; while Microwaves and traditional 35mm camera films have both been dropped (the cameras themselves were dropped last year). We highlighted the fate of non-digital cameras before Christmas, so here I�??ll focus on the memory vs. microwaves battle.

As you can see from the chart below, searches for memory cards in particular are doing well, while searches for microwaves (the purple line) are indeed in decline. However, I wouldn�??t say that microwaves are quite over yet - particularly when compared with TV repairs, another technical product that was dropped this time round and that hardly registers at all in our search data.

Interestingly, the dropping of microwaves from the basket coincided with the exclusion of frozen vegetarian ready meals. Indeed, changing eating habits is a key trend, with the ONS highlighting the growth in both café culture (muffins were added to the list) and more healthy and organic products (smoothies, satsumas and clemantines are also now included).So, are Brits really spending more time hanging around in cafes and cooking organic vegetables, and less time heating up ready meals in the microwave?

When it comes to searching for food on the web, it certainly seems to be the case. Searches for �??organic food�?? have trebled over the last six months, while �??frozen food�?? barely registers as a search term. The chart below illustrates the breadth of searches for �??organic�?? and �??frozen�?? �?? i.e. the number of distinct search terms containing each word. As you can see, last week there were over twice and many search terms containing �??organic�?? as there were �??frozen�??. However, the number of search terms containing �??frozen�?? is actually on the increase, so I don�??t think that we�??re quite in food heaven just yet.

One final interesting thing about the graph is the change in search activity over the Christmas period. Searches containing �??frozen�?? peak the week before Christmas, presumably as people stock up the freezer for the holiday, while �??organic�?? searches drop during the main Christmas weeks. However �??organic�?? searches shoot up again in the New Year, possibly as a result of people�??s healthy eating resolutions.

SEO for Mother�??s Day

2008-02-26T16:00:00Z

Mothering Sunday falls early this year, but searches for the term �??mothers day�?? have been on the rise for a few weeks, and last week were 6% higher than the equivalent week last year. The screenshot below illustrates the results I got when searching for the term on Google UK today (Tuesday 26th February).

Wikipedia was the first organic text entry, and above it are some video and image results, plus 3 paid search links (in addition to another eight on the right hand site, out of shot). Slightly more surprising is the result below Wikipedia: a page created by Woodland�??s Junior School in Kent. Amazingly, this site receives over a quarter of all traffic from the term �??mothers day�?? �?? more than any other site in fact, as the table below illustrates. The school received 142% more traffic from the term over the last 4 weeks than Marks & Spencer, which had to pay for 97.7% of its visits.

Whether by accident or design, the site is obviously extremely well optimized for Mother�??s Day searches, and picks up a huge amount of traffic as a result �?? traffic that any number of retailers would give their right arm for at this time of year. As the chart below illustrates, the site is also well optimized for other seasonal terms, including a number related to Pancake Day and Easter.

This example nicely illustrates the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), particularly if you don�??t want to pay through the nose for sponsored links. We�??re hosting a webinar, Hitwise For SEO: Best Practice Techniques, on this very topic on Friday (29 February, 12:00). The event is open to all, so if you�??re interested in finding out more, please feel free to register here.

Finally, if there�??s anyone from Woodland�??s Junior School reading, we�??d love to hear from you in the comments box below.

UK Polish Internet usage on the rise

2008-02-20T07:45:00Z

Estimates as to the number of Polish people in the UK range from half a million to over a million. Mass immigration from Central and Eastern Europe has led to a rush for the �??Polish Pound�??, with everyone from multinational banks to independent grocers getting in on the act. One of the great things about Hitwise is that we can use Internet data to illustrate changes such as these. As you can see from the chart below, UK Internet traffic to a Hitwise custom category consisting of the top 100 Polish language and community websites increased nine-fold between January 2006 and January 2008.

Google Poland (www.google.pl) is currently the most popular Polish website amongst UK Internet users, accounting for 29.7% of all UK Internet visits to the category. As Google is the most popular search engine across Europe, comparing usage of the different Google country sites is a good way of understanding Internet usage patterns in Britain. Google Poland is the third most visited Google country page in the UK after the UK (www.google.co.uk) and international / US (www.google.com) versions. In January 2008, there were three times as many UK Internet visits to the Polish page as there were to the French (www.google.fr) and Irish (www.google.ie) pages, and ten times as many as to the Australian (www.google.com.au) and Indian (www.google.co.in) pages.

Hitwise demographics data reveals that Google Poland is most popular with young men: 62% of visitors to the site in January 2008 were male, while 85% were under 34 years of age. However, visitors were spread more evenly across the country, with 74% residing outside of London and the South East. As the chart below illustrates, in January there were as many visitors to the site from Scotland as there were from London.

The second most popular Polish site after Google Poland was www.02.pl, a Polish portal page similar to Yahoo! or MSN. YouTube Poland (pl.youtube.com) was ranked third, while another video site Wrzuta was fifth. Wizz Air was the fourth most popular Polish site in January, when the budget airline received more UK Internet visits than a number of more established airlines including Qantas, American Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.

The latter half of the top 10 list is dominated by Polish community sites, including PolishDating.co.uk, a dating website serving the Polish community in the UK and Ireland, at number six. The Polish version of Wikipedia (pl.wikipedia.org) was at number seven, and is currently the most visited foreign language Wikipedia site in the UK. The eighth and ninth ranked Polish sites were both community sites �?? Szkocja, a site serving the Polish community in Scotland, and Polish Elite Board, a Polish message board. The final site in the top 10 was Polish news site TVN 24.

Update: Since posting this blog we've received quite a few suggestions of other Polish sites that we missed out from our original top 10, such as Onet.pl (currently the second most visited site after Google.pl). We are compiling these and will provide an updated top 10 in a couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for a further update.

13 March Update: As promised earlier, below is an updated top 10 polish websites visited in the UK for the month of February 2008. The top ranked site Nasza Klasa is a popular polish social networking website, similar to MySpace.

Top 10 most visited Polish websites visited in February 2008

Paid and organic search trends

2008-02-14T13:40:00Z

One of the most powerful Hitwise tools is our paid and organic search data. We�??ve been analyzing this and have come up with some interesting trends for the travel and retail industries. Before I get into the analysis; a quick note on the methodology. This paid search data represents a weighted average of the proportion of upstream traffic from paid search to twenty leading sites in our Travel and Shopping & Classifieds categories �?? i.e. it illustrates the percentage of each industry�??s traffic come from paid search. The chart below illustrates the proportion of upstream traffic that these two industries receive from paid search over the 15 months to last December.

So what does the data say? The first thing that jumps out that is that the travel industry is more reliant on paid search than the retail industry. The retail industry actually receives more traffic overall from paid search, but this is simply because it receives more visits full stop. Proportionally, travel websites receive on average 50% more traffic from paid search than Shopping and Classifieds sites.

The second interesting conclusion relates to peaks and troughs in paid search traffic, which I�??ve summarized in the table below. As you can see from the chart, the level of paid search activity in both industries is anything but consistent during the year. Naturally, traffic to sites in our Shopping and Classifieds category peaks during November and December, and this is also the period when search traffic in general to the category peaks. However, paid search activity peaks slightly earlier �?? the two biggest months are September and November �?? implying that retailers rely more on paid search during the pre-Christmas browsing / research period than during the peak purchasing weeks in December. On the other hand, paid search activity is at its lowest in the summer months, which coincides with the quietest period for the retail sector.

The travel industry experiences two peaks in traffic. Its busiest period is after Christmas, when people flock online to book their summer holidays, while there is a second peak during the summer months as people visits sites for information, check-in facilities and last minute travel. What the paid and organic search data reveals for this sector is very interesting. Search drives most traffic overall during the summer months, but this peak is primarily driven by organic (or natural) search. The peak for paid search happens during the Autumn as people return to work after the summer, and their thoughts again turn to the prospect of warmer climates.

So, although the travel and retail industries experience peaks and troughs in paid search at different times, there is actually a common theme. Paid search activity peaks during the key �??research�?? period in the buying cycle �?? i.e. in the months before the surge in visits and purchases. This would imply that paid search is more effective if used earlier in the purchasing cycle.

The other question we wanted to answer in this analysis was: is paid search becoming more or less important? As the chart below illustrates, the answer to this question depends on which industry you�??re talking about. The travel sector received significantly more traffic from paid search in the last three months of 2007 than in 2006. This is driven by two factors: a growth in the amount of traffic that the category receives from search overall, and the fact than an increasing proportion of this search traffic (40% in December 2007) comes from paid search.

As you can see from the chart, the opposite is true for retailers. The amount of traffic that sites in our Shopping and Classifieds category receive from paid search decreased during the final quarter of last year. The interesting thing about this trend is that there was actually an increase in traffic from search to the sector during December, implying that retailers are switching from paid to organic search strategies. 29% of search traffic to our selection of 20 top retailers was paid in December 2007, down from 31% in 2006.

Amy Winehouse: the benefits of good and bad publicity

2008-02-12T11:30:00Z

�??Camden Town is burning down�?? claimed Amy Winehouse during her Grammy acceptance speech and, unfortunately, parts of it actually were. The fire that ravaged through Camden Market at the weekend received a lot of coverage in the press, and as a result searches for �??camden�?? increased by 250% last week. The top two destinations for searchers were the Camden Lock Market homepage and the Camden local government page, both of which experienced a significant spike in traffic on Sunday.

It�??s interesting to look at who was going to these sites. The Camden Lock Market homepage saw the biggest increase of the two, with 30% of its traffic last week coming from the BBC News site. Nearly two thirds of visitors to the site came from outside London, nicely illustrating the national interest in the story. On the other hand, 78% of visitors to Camden council�??s website were from the capital �?? with many concerned local residents and businesses presumably amongst the new visitors.

Local resident Winehouse had a better night than her adopted hometown of course, winning 5 Grammys despite not attending the ceremony in the Los Angeles. As you can see from the chart below, there was a notable increase in traffic to her homepage following the victories.

However, it seems like the awards will benefit Amy Winehouse�??s career more in the US than the UK. The singer is hardly lacking exposure at home, and the press coverage generated by her well documented troubles undoubtedly played a role in her album �??Back to Black�?? being the biggest selling album the UK last year. Therefore, it�??s interesting to compare the traffic trends in the UK chart (above) with the American chart (below). UK traffic to her homepage spiked yesterday, but that peak was smaller than the one on 22 January caused by the Sun hosting a video of the singer allegedly taking illegal drugs. That event also caused a spike in US traffic, but this was significantly less than the spike that resulted from her Grammy victories this weekend.

What this data seems to illustrate is that, while there may be no such thing as bad publicity, the value of good and bad publicity varies based on a number of factors. In the case of Winehouse these variables include the audience (Americans vs. Brits), the product (both her album and her image), and the stage of the marketing cycle (her career is more established in the UK than the US).

Moonpig.com, Valentine�??s poems and romantic breaks

2008-02-07T17:00:00Z

Online card delivery company Moonpig.com is currently experiencing its highest ever level of UK Internet traffic in the run up to Valentine�??s Day. For the week ending 2 February 2008, UK Internet visits to the website have grown six-fold by comparison to the same week in 2006. Moonpig.com is currently the most visited website within Hitwise�??s Flowers & Gifts industry in the UK.

Searches for �??moonpig�?? have doubled year-on-year to the four weeks ending 2 February 2008, and it is now the second most searched for term sending traffic to Flowers & Gifts websites, after �??interflora�??. The majority of visitors to the website are women, who accounted for 60-65% of visitors to the website over the last year.

Another romantic trend to look out for over the next week is Valentine�??s poems. In 2007, �??valentines poems�?? was the largest search term containing the word �??valentines�?? during the week ending 17 February 2007, overtaking searches for �??valentines gifts�?? and �??valentines cards�??. This trend looks to be replicated this year, with searches for �??valentines poems�?? already on the increase.

Poemsforfree.com received 30% of UK Internet traffic from searches for �??valentines poems�?? last year during the valentine season, and received 41% of traffic from searches for the term over the last four weeks. Over half (59%) of visitors to the website are female. The most popular types of poems being searched for are �??short valentines poems�??, �??funny valentines poems�?? and �??rude valentines poems�??, with the vast majority of sites receiving traffic from searches relying on organic rather than paid search.

In addition to sending cards and poems to their loved ones, Britain�??s Valentine lovers are also busy booking romantic breaks. There have been more searches for romantic getaways this year than there were in 2007, with searches for �??romantic weekend breaks�??, �??romantic hotels�?? and �??romantic breaks�?? on the increase during January. UK consumers are visiting boutique hotel booking websites as opposed to larger travel agencies, with sites such as Roomforromance.com, Romantichotels.co.uk and Offpeakluxury.com among the top recipients of traffic.

Yahoo! and Microsoft: UK perspective

2008-02-05T17:47:45Z

Following on from Bill�??s and Heather�??s posts, I wanted to share some UK data on the proposed Yahoo! and Microsoft deal. First up: webmail services, and as the chart below illustrates, Microsoft has a dominant market share with its Hotmail service. While Gmail (GoogleMail in the UK) has gained some traction, its market share has been flat for the last few months. Last week the combined market share of the Microsoft and Yahoo! services was 13 times that of Google.

A category with a more level playing field is news services. I�??ve created three custom categories containing all of the news services that ranked in the top 100 News and Media sites in January for each brand �?? i.e. capturing both UK and US properties, as well as both aggregation and content sites. Again, Google�??s market share is extremely flat, while Yahoo! and Microsoft both experience more peaks and troughs in their traffic. Yahoo! remains marginally ahead, although in this case the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft market share was only twice that of Google.

Bill produced a fantastic table illustrating the market share of the three companies�?? properties in a number of different categories, so I thought that I�??d do the same. As the table below illustrates, Yahoo and Microsoft together have four of the top 10 Business and Finance sites, and combined they account for almost one in five visits to the category. Google Finance ranks well outside of the top 100 Business and Finance sites in the UK and therefore currently poses no real threat to Microsoft and Yahoo!, but the situation is very different for maps. As you can see from the table, Google captures almost half of all internet visits to Maps websites in the UK and, even when Google Earth is excluded, Google properties have over six times the market share of the Microsoft and Yahoo! properties combined.

There are a couple of interesting things that come out of this analysis. The first is that all three companies get UK traffic to both their UK and US sites (and other national sites too, ranging from Poland to Hong Kong). The split between these properties varies depending on the subject, the maturity of the service, and each company�??s strategy. Taking the Business and Finance sector as an example, it is interesting to see that Yahoo�??s local UK site receives almost three times as much traffic as its US site, but for MSN, the US site is actually more popular.

The second interesting point is that, outside of the categories described above and a few more, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google have less market share of content sites in the UK than in the US. The exceptions to this rule are: Photography, where Yahoo�??s Flikr is also ranked second and Google�??s Picasa sixth; Rewards and Directories, where Yahoo�??s Kelkoo is number one; and Movies, where the Yahoo! and Microsoft sites have lower market shares than in the US, but still at least rank in the top 10.

Elsewhere, the strength of local brands pushes the big three much further down the rankings. These brands include the BBC and other media companies, but also specialist brands in sectors such as Dating and Employment. For example, Yahoo has three of the top 5 Sports sites in the US, but Yahoo! Sport UK and Ireland was only ranked seventh in the UK last month, with a market share of 1.28%. Elsewhere, Y! Music�??s share in the US is six times its share in the UK, while Yahoo! Hot Jobs ranks 45th in the UK, compared to second in the US. So, if the �??Yahoosoft�?? deal does goes ahead, it won�??t just impact Google, but also a range of other companies in niche sectors that will have more to fear from a combined Yahoo! and Microsoft content business.

How important were final Christmas order and delivery dates?

2008-01-31T10:00:00Z

One of the biggest challenges that online retailers face is delivering goods, particularly during the busy Christmas period. Many consumers (myself included) have had their fingers burnt when ordering online, only to find that presents for loved ones turn up after the event. As the chart below illustrates, the number of search terms containing the word �??delivery�?? increases in the run up to Christmas, this year peaking on the week ending 22 December. For these last 4 weeks before Christmas, a third of people searching for �??delivery�?? went to eBay UK, the largest online retailer in the UK. Indeed, the auction site received traffic from no fewer than 348 separate search terms containing the word �??delivery�?? during those 4 weeks.

Online retailers respond to this concern in two main ways. Firstly, they make sure to communicate final delivery dates in order to avoid disappointing and upsetting their customers. Second, they try to push their final order dates as close as possible to the big day, so as to cash in on any last minute shoppers.

This year a lot of retailers were taking orders up until the 21st or 22nd, which made us think of an interesting bit of analysis. Does a later delivery date help boost traffic to a website in the last week before Christmas? In order to answer this question we recorded the last delivery dates of 50 top online retailers in the UK (as published on their websites), and plotted this against the retailers�?? busiest day during the last couple of weeks before Christmas. The results are illustrated on the chart below: the x axis shows the stores�?? last delivery dates; the y axis their busiest day; and each of the dots represents a retailer.

Now, there isn�??t a clear correlation here, but I think that there may be something in the hypothesis. The grouping along the bottom of chart is no surprise �?? those were the peak days overall for pre-Christmas online shopping in the UK, so you would expect a lot retailers to have their busiest day then. Excluding that bottom row, however, I would claim that the grouping circled in turquoise does indeed show that the closer your final shipping day is to Christmas, the more likely you are experience a traffic peak closer to the big day.

One final interesting finding: the orange dots represent the websites of high street retailers (e.g. Tesco, Argos, Next, etc.), while the blue dots are pure-play online retailers (e.g. Amazon, Play.com, Asos, etc.). I was expecting there to be more of correlation with the online only retailers, but in fact the opposite is true: most of the online retailers experienced their busiest day early on. One explanation for this may be trust. Consumers know that if they miss the last order date for an online retailer they are at the mercy of the postal system, so are therefore a little over-cautious.

This points to a possible explanation for the greater correlation of the orange dots: consumers feel that they can order with high street retailers at the last minute, because they can always pop into the shop if things go wrong. Of course, these dots only represent internet visits, not transactions, so another explanation is that these people are browsing online before going into the store to purchase. Certainly, this would explain the orange dot in the top left corner. That retailer saw its traffic peak on December 22, 6 days after its final order date of 18 December! A final explanation is that these people were looking in advance for sales bargains �?? Boxing Day was the busiest day for online retailers in 2007, and the high street stores benefited from that surge in traffic more than their pure-play online competitors.

This will be the last Christmas shopping post (I promise), but for those of you that are still interested, we have just published a report containing our post 2007 Christmas shopping analysis. You can download it here. Roll on Easter�?�

Sales searches trebled in 2007

2008-01-03T15:00:00Z

The number of UK consumers searching for post-Christmas sales online more than trebled during the 2007 holiday period. There were 249% more UK internet searches for the term �??sales�?? for the week ending 29th December 2007 than for the comparable week in 2006. There was also a 200% increase in searches for the term �??sale�?? over the same period.

The post-Christmas online sales are becoming more and more important to retailers every year. Online holiday shopping started earlier then ever in 2007, but a sluggish last couple of weeks before Christmas also forced many retailers to discount goods and start their sales earlier. For some online retailers, the January sales started on Christmas Day. As we mentioned last week, Boxing Day was the busiest online shopping day of 2007, and there were almost more searches for �??boxing day sales�?? this year than there were for �??january sales�?? last year.

Play.com, which today anounced a 24% increase in Q4 sales, received over a quarter of all UK Internet traffic from searches for the terms �??sales�?? and �??sale�?? for the 4 weeks ending 29th December 2007. As a result, the entertainment retailer saw its market share of all UK Internet visits increase by 15% between the 22nd and 29th December (compared to average for all Shopping and Classifieds site of 13%), when it became the 4th most visited Shopping and Classifieds website in the UK.

The second and third most popular websites receiving traffic from UK Internet searches for �??sale�?? were Tesco Direct and Littlewoods. Meanwhile, �??next sale�?? was the most popular search term containing the word �??sale�?? for 4 weeks ending 29th December, and was the second fastest moving search during the same period.

Boxing Day busiest online shopping day in the UK during 2007

2007-12-28T10:00:00Z

Today we put out a press release announcing that Boxing Day (26th December) was the busiest day for online shopping in the UK over the holiday period, and therefore the whole of 2007. In order to compare this year to previous years we created an index of UK internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds category, using 1st November each year as the base (illustrated in the chart below).

As you can see, not only was Boxing Day the busiest day this year, but it was busier this year than in both 2005 and 2006. Indeed, the importance of the day after Christmas has been increasing steadily over the last two years. Another interesting thing about this graph is the position of the pre-Christmas peak. Last year it moved closer to Christmas as retailers put more effort into ensuring on time delivery and shoppers�?? confidence improved. However, this year the peak moved noticeably back - to the last Sunday in November. Maybe online shoppers have become more organized and are choosing to get their Christmas shopping finished before the December panic, something that was previously the preserve of the ultra-organized.

Back in November we wrote about how high-street retailers had over-taken the pure play retailers online earlier than usual this year, so therefore it�??s not very surprising to see that they are also winning the �??January�?? sales battle. As the graph below illustrates, the high street retailers were ahead all through December and significantly increased their lead on Christmas Day as sales fever kicked in. By Boxing Day, the top 50 high street retailers were receiving over twice as many UK Internet visits as their online-only rivals.

This final table shows that the five top high street retailers on Boxing Day based on their share of UK Internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds category were Argos, Currys, Comet, Marks & Spencer and Next. Looking at this list it seems like the most popular products in the sales will be electronics and clothing.

One final point before we sign off for 2007: after a couple of nail biting episodes (from my point of view, at least), I was extremely happy to see that Alesha Dixon did indeed win Strictly Come Dancing, just as we predicted almost a month ago. See you in 2008!

Top UK gift vouchers this Christmas

2007-12-21T14:00:00Z

There a just a few shopping days left before Christmas and many people �?? most of them men - will be panicking about those last minute gifts. Vouchers are always a popular option and, as we pointed out earlier in the month, more people are searching for them than ever before. Whereas the earlier post focused on viral discount vouchers, the aim here is to understand search trends for more traditional gift vouchers. The table below contains the top 10 most searched for branded vouchers for the 4 weeks ending 15th December, as well as the comparable period in 2005 and 2006. Tesco has been at the top for the last three years and, although its position is boosted by people searching for discount and clubcard vouchers, the gap between the UK�??s largest retailer and the others is large enough to assure us that a significant number of people are also searching for gift vouchers.

The coloured entries represent the companies that appear every year, and they highlight and interesting trend. There has been a noticeable growth in voucher searches for pure-play online retailers - particularly Apple iTunes, but also Amazon and Play.com, who are the third and fourth most popular this year despite not even appearing in the top 10 in 2005. At the same time, the traditional high street retailers have declined. HMV has clearly suffered at the hands of iTunes, Amazon and Play, while John Lewis has fallen outside of the top 10 this year despite being number 2 in 2005. The exception to the rule is Argos, which looks like being one of the big winners this Christmas: its market share of our Shopping and Classifieds category increased by 17% this week compared to last year. If the vouchers are playing a role, this may bode well for the pure play online retailers who, as we reported a couple of months ago, are starting to lose the online Christmas shopping battle with the high street stores.

While branded gift vouchers provide an interesting insight into the success of particular retailers, they are actually currently less searched for than more generic vouchers - i.e. those that are valid across a number of retailers. The table below illustrates the top 10, using the same approach as with the branded vouchers.

Currently the most search for are the uber-generic vouchers: �??discount vouchers�??, �??high street vouchers�??, �??gift vouchers�??, etc. In addition, Love2Shop vouchers are multi-store vouchers, while the importance of online vouchers is highlighted by that appearance of �??e vouchers�?? in the top 10 for the first time this year. The rise of the uber-generic voucher has also caused to a decrease in searchers for sector specific vouchers: leisure and hotel vouchers have both fallen out of the top 10 this year, while cinema and theatre vouchers are still in there but have both dropped in the rankings since 2005. However, just in case you were starting to despair that we�??ve sacrificed culture at the altar of shopping, there is still hope. The granddaddy of them all, that old favourite the book token, has seen a resurgence this year, thanks in part to some very visible offline marketing.

And with that I wish you a Merry Christmas, and hope that Santa brings you all that you may desire (or at least the vouchers to buy it with). If you can rouse yourself from your turkey-induced slumber, make sure to check out the blog between Christmas and New Year for updates on the holiday shopping season.

Paypal vs. Google Checkout in the UK

2007-12-19T15:00:00Z

Last week my colleague Heather Dougherty posted about the success of alternative payment providers in the US this Christmas. While Bill Me Later hasn�??t yet launched in the UK, the other two major players - Google Checkout and Paypal - are both well enough established that we can compare their success in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, Paypal was in the lead for the first couple of months of the holiday shopping season, but Google Checkout overtook it two weeks ago and has maintained a marginal lead since.

Although the two sites are competitors, they have quite different sources of traffic. As you would expect, the majority (59.1%) of Paypal�??s traffic comes from its parent, eBay (combined UK and US sites), with another 12.4% from Google (UK and US sites again). A further 11.7% comes from a combination of email providers, social networks and banks; but just 2.2% comes from non-auction Shopping and Classified sites. This compares with 45.3% for Google Checkout, which helps explain the large number of retailers in the table below llustrating the top 20 upstream sites visited before Google Checkout last week.

Most of these are smaller independent retailers, although two larger retailers (Vodafone and Dabs) also appear. Dabs accepts payment via both Google Checkout and Paypal, but currently sends 16 times as much traffic to former than the latter. However, visits do not always mean purchases. When Heather Hopkins posted on this topic earlier in the year, there was some discussion in the comments section about what people did once they got to the shopping cart.

While I can�??t provide abandonment data, it is likely that people visiting another retail site after either Paypal or Google Checkout may have not completed their purchase. In other words, a lot of downstream traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds category could be used as a proxy for abandonment rates. As the graph below illustrates, more people currently visit another Shopping and Classifieds site after Google Checkout than after Paypal, and that the gap is widening.

Supermarkets' online share increasing

2007-12-13T16:10:01Z

Supermarkets have increased their share of the UK online retail market in the run up to Christmas. A Hitwise custom category of the top 45 supermarket operated websites accounted for 6.6% of all UK Internet visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites for the week ending 8 December 2007, up from 4.4% for the same week in 2005. Furthermore, this figure is likely to increase for the week ending 15 December, traditionally the busiest week online for supermarkets.

One of the main drivers of supermarkets�?? growth online has been the increasing proportion of non-food items they are selling. As the table below illustrates, none of the top 10 product search terms sending traffic to the Supermarkets custom category for the 4 weeks ending 8 December were food related. Nine of the top 10 product searches were for electricals or entertainment products, with �??nintendo ds�?? the most popular term. Other popular terms included �??music downloads�??, �??laptops�?? and �??lcd tv�??

Although their online market share doesn�??t yet match their dominance on the high street, there is no doubt that supermarkets are gaining ground on their online rivals. As with the offline world, this growth is being fuelled by non-food sales. Often this is achieved by setting up specialist micro sites in order to gain market share in a particular niche market. For example, Tesco Direct already has a 6% share of the Shopping and Classifieds �?? Department Stores category despite only having launched in September 2006, while Asda Electricals increased its share of the Shopping and Classifieds �?? Appliances and Electronics category from 1.0% to 1.8% over the last year.

Another area of online retail that supermarkets have proved successful in is wine. As the table below illustrates, three of the top 10 wine retail websites for the week ending 8 December were operated by supermarkets, with Tesco Wine Warehouse alone accounting for a quarter of all visits to a Hitwise custom category of the top 50 wine retail websites. Combined, the online wine stores of Tesco, Sainsbury�??s and Waitrose account for one third of all visits to the category, while �??waitrose wine�?? was the second most popular search term containing the word �??waitrose�?? during the 4 weeks ending 8 December.

The demographics of gadgets

2007-12-12T15:00:00Z

We came across this interesting claim from John Lewis that it expects to sell more electrical goods to women than men for the first time this Christmas. In order to test their prediction, I looked at the demographics of our Shopping and Classifieds �?? Appliances and Electronics category for the last 4 weeks, as well as the same period over the last 4 years.

As you can see, the gap is closing - but we�??re not quite there yet. In fact, when you take into consideration the growth of women online over the same period, the gap has actually increased. As the graph below illustrates, the representation of female visitors to the category against the online population as a whole decreased last year.

However, there is a further plot twist that may prove John Lewis correct after all. The demographic data in the two previous charts is for specialist electronics retailers only, and therefore excludes visits to department stores such as John Lewis and Amazon. Women accounted for 54.6% of visitors to our Shopping and Classifieds - Department Stores category during the same period, over indexing relative to the online population. And online department stores are certainly selling electrical goods �?? the six most popular non-navigational search terms (i.e. product names rather than retailer names) currently sending traffic to the category are: �??nintendo wii�??, �??wii�??, �??nintendo ds�??, �??nintendo ds lite�??, �??nintendo ds console�?? and �??ipod nano�??.

So maybe the answer is that women prefer to purchase their electricals at department stores and high street chains, whereas men prefer the more specialist shops. Certainly, analyzing a selection of the top electricals retailers this seems to be the case: ebuyer, Maplin and Dabs are all more popular with men than women, while the opposite is true for Currys, Carphone Warehouse, and Asda Electricals. It is also interesting to look at the top 10 product search terms sending traffic to the electrical retailers that are most over indexed amongst men (eBuyer) and women (Asda Electricals). Boys, it seems, will always be boys (with their toys), while women have slightly different priorities.

Nintendo Wii the most searched for product this Christmas, despite UK shortages

2007-12-05T16:00:00Z

The Nintendo Wii was the most searched for product by UK Internet shoppers during November. There were thirteen times as many UK Internet searches for �??nintendo wii�?? sending traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category as there were for �??apple ipod�??, and over twice as many searches for �??wii�?? as for both �??ipod�?? and �??iphone�??. Despite shortages of the popular console in the UK, the volume of searches for �??nintendo wii�?? has increased 158% since November 2006, while searches for �??wii�?? have increased by 278%.

Top 10 product searches sending traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classified category, two weeks ending 1st December 2007, based on UK Internet usage.

The Nintendo Wii currently accounts for six in every ten searches for a games console. The popularity of the Wii and the Nintendo DS mean that there were more searches for Nintendo products in November than Apple products. This is despite the significant increases in searches for both the iPod and the iPhone, which is currently the most searched for mobile phone in the UK.

Unfortunately for UK consumers, there is still a Wii shortage in the UK. As a result, a number of sites specifically dedicated to sourcing the console have already appeared and are proving popular. The most successful of these, Wii Consoles, was the 58th most visited Shopping and Classifieds website in the UK in November, having increased its market share by 265% during the month.

It�??s interesting that wii-consoles.co.uk has managed to achieve this growth through effective SEO rather than aggressive paid search (which accounts for just 1% of its search traffic). The site is delivering traffic to a number of large retail sites, as the table below illustrates. These sites are also generally the ones receiving search traffic from Wii related terms. Variations on the term are the most popular non navigational search terms currently sending traffic to Argos, Play and Amazon UK; and the second or third most popular for HMV, John Lewis and GAME.

Christmas market search trends

2007-12-05T09:00:00Z

The setting up of a Christmas market just around the corner from the Hitwise UK office made me realize just how popular these seasonal attractions have become. According to Wikipedia, the first Christmas market was held in Dresden in 1434, so they�??ve been established in central Europe for a long time. UK consumers became interested a few years ago, first by travelling to cities in Germany and elsewhere, and then via the appearance of home grown markets in a number of British cities. As the chart below illustrates, the breadth of searches containing the terms �??christmas market�?? and �??christmas markets�?? increases gradually throughout the year, but really takes off during September

The most popular search terms containing the two phrases are those that include specific locations, and they give an interesting insight into which markets people are interested in. During November this year, the most searched for locations were UK cities, with Lincoln, Bath and Manchester the most popular.

However, searches for Christmas markets vary depending on term being used and the time of year. People searching for markets outside of the UK are more likely to use the plural. They are also more likely to start searching earlier in the year, presumably in order to allow time to plan travel. To illustrate this, the list above includes 13 UK locations and 6 overseas; while the list below - which is for �??christmas markets�?? rather than �??christmas market�??, and is for September this year rather than December - includes just 6 UK locations, but 12 overseas.

Discount retail vouchers

2007-12-04T14:55:28Z

Last week Gap hit the headlines with its 30% off voucher, which some wag photoshopped and forwarded on as a 60% off voucher. Whatever the problems caused by the fake voucher, it seems likely that they were more than offset by the free publicity. Money-off vouchers have become an increasingly popular form of viral marketing for brands of all shapes and sizes. Last week UK Internet searches for �??vouchers�?? reached a 2 year high, and have already overtaken last year�??s Christmas peak.

In order to try and determine how successful these vouchers are, I took five brands that have recently released them, and charted visits to their sites over last few weeks.

The increase in traffic to Gap was moderate, but it doesn�??t have a transactional site in the UK. Hamley�??s received a boost, but as you would expect it has been on an upward trend over the last few weeks anyway. The two sites that experienced a notable increase last week were Threshers and Selfridges, and the chart below may explain why. It illustrates the amount of upstream traffic that the sites received from web-based email services and, as you can see, both Threshers and Selfridges clearly benefited from the viral effect of people mailing the voucher to their friends.

The lesson here is: if you plan on using a money-off voucher to drive traffic to your site, make sure its email friendly.

Digital photo frames more popular than cameras this Christmas

2007-11-28T14:00:00Z

We�??ve just completed our latest hot gadget list and, given the amount of coverage they have received, I wasn�??t surprised to see that the Nintendo Wii is currently the most searched for console in the UK, nor that the iPhone now accounts for one third of all searches for a specific mobile phone. However, one gadget that has crept up slowly without a huge amount of fanfare is the digital photo frame �?? those small LCD photo frames that show digital photos either via a USB connection or memory card slot. In fact, they are now so popular that last week searches for them overtook searches for cameras �?? digital or otherwise.

This sudden popularity has led to flurry of bidding and optimization on digital photo frame related terms �?? primarily from gadget shops and sites set up specifically to cash in on the trend, but also from more mainstream retailers such as Amazon UK ('digital photo frames' was the 28th most popular search term sending traffic there over the last 4 weeks). All of the four sites charted below receive the vast majority of their search traffic from digital photo frame related terms (with the exception of RedSave - around three quarters of its traffic comes from other terms).

For those of you wishing to cash in on this trend, I can reveal that the most searched for brands are Imagin, Phillips and Kodak, while the most popular size is 6.5" �?? 7".

Child benefit chaos, football failure

2007-11-22T15:00:00Z

Yesterday we left work wishing for two things: an English football victory; and that today would provide us with some interesting data about the impact of the Revenue and Customs child benefit crisis on the government and banking sectors. By now you probably know that our first wish wasn�??t fulfilled, but you may be surprised to learn that our second one wasn�??t really either. While there was a slight increase in traffic the HMRC website on Tuesday when the story broke, visits actually dropped yesterday, the first full day that people had to visit the site. We were also expecting to see an increase in traffic to banks as people rushed to check their accounts, but again the increases were only minor.

However, one sector that did see a noticeable increase in traffic was the credit reference agencies. www.creditexpert.co.uk (which is owned by Experian, Hitwise�??s parent company) went from being the 718th most visited site in the UK on Tuesday, to 685th on Wednesday and the 370th yesterday, and other credit reference sites, including Equifax and Call Credit, also saw significant increases in their ranking. People are clearly following the advice to visit these sites, and also sharing this advice with their friends: 2 of the top 5 websites referring traffic to Credit Expert yesterday were Windows Live Mail and Yahoo! Europe Mail.

Back to the football, and there have already been claims that England�??s exit from the European Championships will have a negative impact on the economy. Sports retailers in particular expecting to take a hit, and shares in the sector have declined. Umbro, which manufacturers the official England football kit, had already issued a statement to the market this morning before the FA had even confirmed Steve McClaren�??s sacking as England manager.

We recently highlighted how online sports retailers received a boost from England�??s success in the Rugby World Cup and, as the chart above illustrates, sports retail does receive a boost from major sporting tournaments. It�??s also interesting to see that last week the sector benefited from the build up to last night�??s game, and that Christmas is a traditional peak for the sector. It�??ll be interesting to see whether a fall in demand for England (and other home nations) kits has an effect on Christmas trading, potentially putting a stop to the sector�??s gradually rise over the last two years.

High street retailers overtake pure-play retailers online

2007-11-16T12:00:00Z

High street retailers received over half of all UK Internet visits to online retailers during October (based on two Hitwise custom categories consisting of the top 50 high street and non-high street online retailers in the UK, excluding online auctions and ticket retailers). 51.1% of visits were to an online retailer that also has an offline presence while 48.9% were to a retailer without a high street presence.

Traditionally high street retailers receive less online traffic than their pure play online competitors, except during the Christmas and January sales period. In 2006 high street retailers only overtook their online rivals during the peak month of December, but this year they overtook in September and have been widening the gap ever since.

Search engines are the largest source of traffic to both High Street and pure-play retailers online. However, High Street retailers were more successful at gaining traffic from search engines during October, with Search Engines accounting for 37.1% of their upstream traffic compared with 30.4% for the for pure-play online retailers. Email marketing is also an important source of traffic for retailers in the run up to Christmas, with one in 20 visits to a Shopping and Classifieds website coming from web-based email site in October. Analysis from our Experian sister company CheetahMail shows that UK consumers in October spent an average of £85.00 online in response to permissions-based email offers from apparel retailers

The Apparel and Accessories sector has seen the largest online growth of the 19 Hitwise retail sub-sectors, increasing its share of online Shopping and Classifieds visits from 6.6% to 8.4% over the last 12 months. The sector now accounts for one in every 12 Internet visits to the retail sector. The top three Apparel and Accessories retail websites in October were Next.co.uk, Asos.com and Topshop.co.uk, while �??next�??, �??asos�?? and �??topshop�?? were also the three most searched for terms sending traffic to the sector.

Next.co.uk currently has twice the market share of visits and two and a half times as many brand searches its nearest rival, Asos.com. However both Asos.com and Topshop.co.uk have seen a steady growth in visits over the last year. Both sites index highly with females aged 18-24 and capture a higher proportion of traffic from the North West region and London than Next.

Silver surfers become silver shoppers

2007-11-12T12:00:00Z

Everyone knows about the growth of silver surfers, so in the run up to Christmas we decided to see what impact they were having on online retail. The chart below illustrates the segmentation of visitors to our Shopping and Classifieds category by age group for the 4 weeks ending November 3rd this year and the same period last year. As you can see, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of visitors aged 55+ to the category. They are now the second largest group of visitors, accounting for 22.4% of all visits to online retail sites.

When comparing the Shopping and Classifieds category to the online population as a whole, no individual age group was strongly under- or over indexed compared to the online population. In other words, people of all age groups are now pretty much equally likely to visit a retail website. Interestingly, there also isn�??t a huge difference when comparing the top 20 most visited retail sites for the oldest and youngest UK Internet users. As the table below illustrates, 13 of the top 20 websites are common to both 18-24 and 55+ age brackets

The sites highlighted in green have a higher ranking for the respective age-group �?? e.g. Dell EMEA has a higher ranking for people over the age of 55, while Play.com has a higher ranking in the 18-24 age group. Generally, the more established brands, department stores and directories / comparison sites are more popular with older shoppers, while younger shoppers prefer entertainment and apparel retailers. Marks & Spencer and John Lewis are both ranked highly with over-55s, but don�??t appear in the younger top 20.

The table above is based on the total number visits for each age group, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it contains so many large brands. However, table below lists the 10 retail websites that currently receive the highest proportion of traffic from people aged over 55. So, Damart Online receives 73.5% of visits from this age group, but only 4.8% from people aged between 18 and 24. And what does Damart sell? Various items of clothing, but it specializes in thermal underwear.

iPhone UK launch

2007-11-09T11:30:00Z

It hasn�??t received much attention in the media over the last week so you probably haven�??t noticed, but the iPhone goes on sale in the UK today. 02 is the exclusive British carrier, although the phone will be available via three separate retailers: 02, Apple and Carphone Warehouse. As the table below illustrates, these three companies combined received over 60% of all traffic from the search term �??iPhone�?? during the 4 weeks ending 3rd November.

When you combine the share of its two sites, Apple received the most traffic from the term - although it�??s interesting to see that more people went to the global iPhone page than the UK homepage. A successful paid search campaign has helped www.o2.co.uk rise to the top of the pile: �??iPhone�?? is now third most popular search term sending traffic to its homepage, and it has been steadily increasing its share since the 02 / Apple partnership was announced in September.

The chart below illustrates the volume of UK searches for �??iPhone, and there are a number of clear peaks. The first, and so far largest, was back in January when the product was first revealed by Steve Jobs at the Macworld convention. The second occurred in the summer, when the product was released in the US, while the third occurred in September when the UK release date was announced. So far this fourth peak hasn�??t exceeded the initial January peak, but then we don�??t yet have the search data for this week. When we have this data next week we�??ll let you know what happened, as well as revealing which of the three retailers saw the biggest boost in traffic to their websites as a result.

Youdoo doll a Dragons' Den success

2007-11-02T08:00:00Z

The fifth series of Dragons' Den is in full swing, and the most memorable product so far has been the Youdoo doll, designed by Sarah Lu. The personalize-able doll won the backing of Dragon Deborah Meaden during the second episode, which was aired by the BBC on Monday 22nd October. As a result, traffic to company�??s homepage peaked on the following day. And people weren�??t just browsing �?? 48% of visitors went to Google Checkout after www.youdoodoll.co.uk, presumably to make, or at least contemplate, a purchase.

Youdoo is a catchy name, but also open to potential misspellings. We ran a search term analysis on a number of these, and, as the graph below illustrates, they all saw a significant increase in search volume following the show. This nicely illustrates the power of successful media coverage (or advertising) on brand searches.

One final interesting bit of data is where people went when after searching for the doll. Whether using the correct spelling (�??youdoo doll�??) or the most popular misspelling (�??yoodoo doll�??), the largest recipient of traffic was not the company�??s homepage, but gift retailer I Want One Of Those.

Top Halloween Costumes for 2007

2007-10-24T12:05:00Z

My colleague Eva Stringleman noticed that "halloween costumes" was the fourteenth most popular search term in the UK sending traffic to our Apparel category last week - a very high ranking in an industry dominated by brand searches. So following on from a yearly tradition set by our US counterparts, I thought it would be great to see what the most popular Halloween costumes are this year in the UK.

Below is a table of the most popular searches containing the word "costume" for 2007 compared to 2006. I've used "costume" as our data shows that the singular is a more commonly used term than the plural, "costumes".

Halloween 2007 is the year of Tim Burton, with 3 of the Top 10 halloween costume searches for Tim Burton characters. Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride enter the Top 10 at #6 and #10 respectively, while Beetlejuice moves up one place to #9.

Searches for �??pirate costume�?? continue to dominate as the most popular term for 2006 and 2007 (also in the US). This is driven in part by the popularity of the Johnny Depp movies, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the increasing interest in International Talk like a Pirate Day on September 19th.

I�??m not a gamer so I wasn�??t sure what to make of this year's number two, but a quick search on Google revealed Master Chief is a character from the popular Xbox game Halo. Darth Vader dropped right out of the Top 10, although Star Wars is still represented with �??stormtrooper costume�?? ranking at #8.

Searches for �??Halloween costumes�?? start at the same time in the middle of August each year, and last year peaked during the week ending 28th October. So far the volume of searches are on par for a similar peak this week as trick or treaters continue to leave it right up to the last minute to get their costumes.

Social networks' retail impact has increased by 153% in the UK since last Christmas

2007-10-23T08:55:00Z

The amount of UK Internet traffic online retailers receive from social networks increased by 153% between December 2006 and September 2007. This September, 3.1% of UK Internet visits to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category came from a Hitwise custom category consisting of the top 25 social networks in the UK.

Online auction sites, in particular eBay, are the main retail beneficiaries of the social networking phenomenon, receiving 31.4% of all downstream traffic that Social Networks send to Shopping and Classifieds sites. The more traditional retail categories �?? Department Stores and Apparel and Accessories sites �?? are next, respectively receiving 1 in 8 and 1 in 9 of all UK retail visits from Social Networks. The close links between social networks and the entertainment industry help Music and Video & Games retailers, which are the fourth and fifth biggest beneficiaries respectively. Combined, these five categories account for 72% of all online retail traffic sent from social networks.

In September 2007, Social Networks accounted for 1 in every 20 UK Internet visits. In terms of Internet visits, Social Networking has grown by over 70% in the UK since last Christmas, and it is starting to have a serious impact on many different types of website. Social Networks are now the fourth most popular source of traffic for Shopping and Classifieds sites after Search, Email Services and other Shopping and Classified sites. And this traffic increasingly reflects British society as a whole. Social networks are no longer just for teenagers and students �?? between December 2006 and September 2007, the proportion of visitors aged 55+ to our Net Communities and Chat category, which is dominated by social networks, has increased by 63%, while the proportion coming from the 18 �??24 age group has decreased by 19%.

In September 2006, www.facebook.com was the 126th most visited URL in the UK, but its market share has increased 30 fold over the last 12 months, from 0.056% of all UK Internet visits to 1.66% in September 2007. www.facebook.com is now the fifth most visited URL in the UK, and it is also the fifth most popular source of traffic for other websites. In the retail sector, www.facebook.com refers 1% of UK Internet traffic to Shopping and Classifieds websites.

Since opening up to the general public in September 2006, Facebook�??s growth has been driven by a combination of viral marketing and rapidly increasing brand awareness. A quarter of Facebook�??s traffic comes from web-based email services, which is a combination of new invites and alerts to existing members. A further quarter comes from search engines, and an illustration of the site�??s brand strength is the fact that �??facebook�?? is now the third most searched for term in the UK.

Radiohead, Freakonomics and free music

2007-10-10T10:00:00Z

Radiohead grabbed headlines last week by announcing that fans will be allowed to name their own price when downloading the band�??s new album, In / Rainbows. The band is currently taking pre-orders via their official website, which saw an 11-fold increase in UK Internet traffic last week to become the most visited website in our Music �?? Bands and Artists category. Radiohead are one of the few current UK bands to make it really big across the Atlantic, and this was illustrated by the fact that their site also jumped 260 places to become the seventh most visited band website in the US last week. Back in the UK, they even managed to outperform the Spice Girls, who saw a jump in traffic to their official site after they announced some additional reunion tour dates.

So why give away your album for free? It�??s certainly a model that�??s becoming fashionable in the music industry. Indie band The Charlatans also announced last week that they would give away their new single for free, while Prince has just finished a hugely successful sell out run of gigs at the 02 Arena that was promoted by giving away his new album with the Daily Mail. Using the music as a trailer for concerts is probably the most talked about approach, and the Radiohead example bears this out: the number one website visited after their homepage last week was a ticketing site.

However, for Radiohead there may have been a number of other possible motivations: their political stance; the fact that, after 15 years of success, they probably don�??t need the money; or maybe even an interesting experiment in Freakanomics. One assumption is that people are now so used to downloading music for free from file sharing sites that bands may as well just give it away. I decided to test this theory by comparing visitors to Radiohead�??s site with those to Blubster, currently the most popular file sharing site for music in the UK. The chart below illustrates the representation of a number of Experian MOSAIC lifestyle groups amongst visitors to both the Radiohead and the Blubster site.

The first thing to point out is that there are 6 MOSAIC groups that I haven�??t included in the graph because their representation across both websites was broadly similar. These 6 were mostly middle income groups, but, as the graph shows, the real differences lie within the higher and low income groups. Lower income groups such as 'Municipal Dependency' are over-indexed on Blubster but under-indexed on the Radiohead site; and vice versa in the case of higher-income groups such as Urban Intelligence.

This data says a few things: Blubster�??s users are more likely to come from lower income groups, while Radiohead fans are more likely to come from higher income groups. This is not particularly surprising �?? Radiohead are, after all, considered to be the typical �??middle class student band�?? �?? but the data also shows that the assumption "people would just download it anyway, no one buys music anymore" is not necessarily true in the case of Radiohead fans. It�??ll be really interesting to see how much people do pay for the album �?? let�??s hope that Radiohead are Freakonomics fans, and decide to release the data!

Rugby succcess boosts sports retail

2007-10-08T10:30:00Z

The Rugby World Cup has managed to knock football off the back pages a few times over the last month, particularly this weekend. Unsurprisingly, searches for �??rugby�?? have increased by 250% since the beginning of September, with specialist rugby sites and news sites benefiting most from this increase in traffic.

Last year Bill did some analysis on the impact of the Tour de France on bike sales in the US, and he found that brands which featured prominently on the Tour benefited from the association. Taking a similar approach, I found that the Rugby World Cup has had a positive impact on the number of searches for related merchandise.

This increase in searches has fed through to the retailers: for example, the top two sites receiving traffic from the term 'rugby balls' last week were Rugbystore.co.uk and the Nike Store. Indeed, it seems that the Rugby World Cup has given a boost to sporting retailers overall, with traffic to the category up on last year by between 5% and 10% each week over the last month. It seems that England fans aren�??t the only ones celebrating after the weekend�??s action �?? sports retailers in the UK should keep their fingers crossed for more good news from France on Saturday.

Hot Christmas gadgets: Nintendo Wii, sat nav and iPods

2007-09-27T14:30:00Z

Christmas, of course, comes earlier every year. For retailers it starts earlier than most as they try to identify the year�??s 'must have' gifts. In order to give them a bit of a hand, we�??ve spent the last week analyzing search data in order to make some predictions as to what we think will be this year�??s hot gadgets, entertainment, toys and fashions.

First a word on the methodology. Search term analysis provides great insight into people's habits and desires, so we analysed the top 2,000 search terms that sent traffic to a Hitwise Custom Category consisting of the top 100 online retail websites in the UK during the four weeks ending 22nd September 2007. Gadgets are up first, and our defintion encompasses a range of consumer electronics products including mobile phones, computers and peripherals, games consoles, in car entertainment and navigation systems, and audio-visual equipment,

The Nintendo Wii is the most searched for gaming console in the UK, ranking as the sixth most popular gadget heading into Christmas, ahead of the Xbox 360 at number 7 and the Nintendo DS at number 8. There were 5 times as many searches for the Nintendo Wii as the Sony Playstation 3, which did not make the top 10 gadget list.

Top gadgets by share of searches

Mobile phones are the most popular gadgets in the UK, capturing 46% of all searches, followed by computers, iPods, satellite navigation systems and high definition televisions. The success for the TomTom brand of satellite navigation systems continues, with the number of searches for 'tomtom' double that for the generic term 'sat nav'. Searches for 'external hard drive' have increased by 15% year on year, reflecting a desire among UK consumers to back up their precious collections of digital music, photos and video.

The Nokia N95 multimedia phone captures almost one in ten searches for mobile phone models in the UK, making it the most popular handset. It is followed closely by the stylish Nokia 6300, with 8.7% of searches, and the Samsung G600 5 mega pixel camera phone, with 8.5%.

Top mobile phone models by share of searches

The top mobile phone manufacturer by share of UK Internet searches is Nokia, which receives 35% of searches across the top 5 brands, followed by Sony Ericsson with 29% and Samsung with 24%. Motorola is at number four with a 6% share, followed by LG with 5%.

There are 14 times as many searches for the Apple iPod as for all the other MP3 players combined. Two thirds of searches are for the generic iPod, while one in five searchers is looking specifically for the iPod Nano, which has seen searches increase by 67% year on year.

Most searched for gadget brands

The new iPod Touch and the UK release of the iPhone were announced too late to have a significant impact on the retail search data, but there is a huge amount of internet buzz about both products. For example, the volume of searches for �??iPhone�?? sending traffic to News and Media websites has increased 5 fold over the last month. With Apple the most searched for gadget brand in the UK, it seems likely that both products will find eager fans amongst British consumers. Dell is the second most searched for brand, receiving almost four times as many searches as its nearest rival HP.

Entertainment, toys and fashion to follow over the next week, so keep an eye on the blog.

Cheap vs. Free

2007-09-13T08:15:00Z

This week's Guardian Siteseeing column was inspired by Sandra's and Bill's recent posts on search value determinants. The main similarity between search behaviours in the UK and the other regions is the use of 'cheap' to search for travel and holiday products, although where Brits are looking for train tickets, Americans prefer car rentals. Cheap money in the form of insurance and loans is also popular.

The web continues to offer a range of free entertainments, and games and music top the list in the UK just as they do in the US. The pleasures of the flesh continue to temp bargain hunters, while there a still some optimists who believe that simply searching for �??free�?? will unearth something worthwhile.