Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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Politics, Religion and Sex - Two out of Three isn't Bad

August 26, 2008

What an interesting week in the fast movers section. My parents always taught me to not discuss politics, religion and sex. This week I can avoid politics, but the other two are directly linked and have raised the interest of Australian online users.

1. mike guglielmucci
2. michael guglielmucci
3. usain bolt
4. mixi
5. sophie monk
6. epl
7. avg free download
8. colin the whale
9. book
10. ellen degrees

Michael Guglielmucci is a former pastor at Planetshakers City Church in Melbourne and Hillsong Church in Sydney. On news that his declared illness with cancer was untrue and in fact a cover for a 16 year long 'porn addiction', traffic to the Hillsong Church website (www.hillsong.com) spiked, with rankings in the Hitwise Lifestyle – Religion category jumping from #17 to #3, during week ending 23/08/2008.

Staying with that theme of sorts, the recent offer from Playboy to our very own Sophie Monk to appear in between the articles for a reported $1million dollars has the boys rushing to see more of Sophie. Recent searches for 'sophie monk' has included variations such as 'sophie monk bikini', 'sophie monk pictures', 'sophie monk peta' (the advertisement she appeared naked in) and 'sophie monk playboy'.

I must admit if I was a betting man, Usain Bolt – the Jamaican Gold medalist in the 100m, 200m sprints and 4x100m Men's relay at the Beijing Olympic Games would have been my tip for the fastest mover for the week, but when sex, politics and religion kick in Usain ended up with a Bronze. Wikipedia and You Tube were the main beneficiaries of searches for 'usain bolt'.

Searches for 'epl' are on the increase as the English Premier League (EPL) now heads into its third week of the season and gathering momentum online, with fantasy leagues and tipping dominating the top search term variations. The official site, www.premierleague.com, is the premium recipient of traffic, Foxsports is the chosen local site and Manchester United the team that receives most traffic from the search term 'epl'. Locally the A League is also heading into the third week of the new season, so I thought it interesting to see the comparison between the two leagues from Australian football followers.

The chart below looks at the past 12 month share trend comparing the official A-League website and the English Premier League website. Both sites are down in overall share compared year-on-year, A-League down 22.9% and the EPL down 28.7% (comparing weeks ending 23/08/08 and 25/08/07). Now the Olympics are over, the British can get the focus back on their local sport and locally the A-League maybe able to increase the media coverage received to drive the local growth of the sport at the elite level.

Colin the baby humpback whale made his last big splash, after being euthanised last week in the waters of Sydney's Pittwater. Colin who was abandoned by his mother had tried suckling yachts but eventually lost his battle in a story that received enormous media coverage around the country. Here's a tribute to Colin I found on You Tube.

The appearance of 'book' within the top ten gives us hope that life is not all sport, sex and religion .. but the most popular searches containing book are for 'face book' and the car sales guide 'red book', with Facebook receiving just over 1 in every 6 visits as result of searches to 'book'.

Online security and concerns over viruses' sees 'avg free downloads' hit the top ten fast movers this week with traffic heading to download.com and avg-free-download.org. While, at No. 4, the invite only Japanese social networking site, Mixi appears. With 10 million users Mixi has a reported 80% share of the social network space in Japan (Source: Wikipedia.org).

Wrapping up the top 10 this week, Australia's own Mandy Rogers – now known as Portia de Rossi married her beau US talk show host and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres in Los Angeles. Seven of the top 10 queries containing Ellen DeGeneres featured mention of Portia, girlfriend or the wedding. Our inquisitive nature to see the photos of the nuptials was behind the increased interest with Ellen's own TV show website, Wikipedia and Celebrity Fix on Ninemsn being the favoured destinations.

My one big disappointment for the week is that David Hasslehoff's recently launched social network 'Hoffspace' didn't make it into the fast movers. Maybe next week?

And, as always, we urge you to follow Hitwise Asia Pacific on Twitter to keep up with the latest Internet data and trends.