Experian Hitwise Logo

• All Analyst Weblogs
• North America
  • Bill Tancer
  • Heather Hopkins
  • Heather Dougherty
• United Kingdom
  • Robin Goad
• Asia Pacific
  • Alan Long
  • Sandra Hanchard
  • Hitwise To Go
• Insider
  • Client
  • Company
  • Industry
  • Product

Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

Analyst Weblog

« The Last Olympic Post – Part One | Is Chrome the New Colour of the Web? »

The Last Olympic Post - Part Two

September 03, 2008

Yesterday we reviewed the comparative interest in the Olympics, the specific events that captured the attention and the relative site performance in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Today, using our Search Intelligence product we are looking at how users found their way to the Olympic sites and which athletes stood out on a local and international basis.

While the sites reviewed yesterday are interesting, search terms provide a snapshot of the breadth of interest in the Games from supporters of all kinds. Australian's used a massive amount of search terms by comparison to all other countries in generating traffic to the Olympics category for the 4 weeks ending August 23, 2008. (New Zealand 12 weeks, Singapore 24 weeks ending August 23, 2008)

In all countries, Olympics and Beijing are the predominant search term variants that delivered the largest volume of traffic to the categories. The following table includes the top 5 search terms with the percentage of visits delivered to the Olympics category in each country.

Australia	New Zealand	Singapore	UK	US
olympics	olympics	beijing olympics	olympics	olympics
beijing 2008 olympic games	beijing 2008 olympic games	olympics	beijing 2008 olympic games	nbc olympics
beijing olympics	beijing olympics	beijing 2008 olympic games	beijing 2008	olympics 2008
beijing 2008	beijing 2008	olympic	olympics 2008	beijing 2008 olympic games
olympics 2008	olympics 2008	beijing 2008	beijing olympics	2008 olympics

The most searched for Athletes in each country highlight the parochialism of sport and its part in building national pride /support. But as varied as the search terms are country to country the Games created two truly global stars – Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

Over 11,500 athletes competed at the Beijing Olympic Games and made up our Search Term Portfolio, below are lists for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore of the most searched for local athletes and international athletes and the share of the Athletes Portfolio delivering traffic to the Olympics category in each country.

Australia
Local Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
1	stephanie rice	Swimming	17.72%
4	grant hackett	Swimming	3.37%
5	eamon sullivan	Swimming	3.34%
6	cadel evans	Cycling	2.33%
8	leisel jones	Swimming	1.44%
9	melissa wu	Diving	1.41%
10	lauren jackson	Basketball	1.26%
11	tamsyn lewis	Athletics	1.04%
14	nikki hudson	Hockey	0.85%
16	sally mclellan	Athletics	0.81%

Australia
International Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Country	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
2	michael phelps	USA	Swimming	5.57%
3	usain bolt	Jamaica	Swimming	3.44%
7	amanda beard	USA	Swimming	2.19%
12	nastia liukin	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	0.95%
15	shawn johnson	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	0.84%
17	roger federer	Switzerland	Tennis	0.81%
18	leo	Brazil	Football	0.72%
19	rafael nadal	Spain	Tennis	0.69%
21	laure manaudou	France	Swimming	0.62%
25	alicia sacramone	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	0.59%

New Zealand
Local Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
2	valerie vili	Athletics	3.96%
3	mahe drysdale	Rowing	3.66%
6	sarah walker	Cycling	2.11%
8	mark todd	Equestrian	1.89%
12	hayden roulston	Cycling	1.57%
13	moss burmester	Swimming	1.52%
14	marina erakovic	Tennis	1.49%
18	nick willis	Athletics	1.15%
21	julian dean	Cycling	1.02%
22	beatrice faumuina	Athletics	0.97%

New Zealand
International Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Country	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
1	michael phelps	USA	Swimming	7.55%
4	usain bolt	Jamaica	Athletics	3.40%
5	ana ivanovic	Serbia	Tennis	2.35%
7	leo	Brazil	Football	1.90%
9	shawn johnson	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	1.82%
10	amanda beard	USA	Swimming	1.80%
11	nastia liukin	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	1.80%
15	roger federer	Switzerland	Tennis	1.49%
16	stephanie rice	Australia	Swimming	1.47%
17	maria sharapova	Russia	Tennis	1.23%

Singapore
Local Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
9	tian wei feng	Table Tennis	2.08%
15	bei bei sun	Table Tennis	1.32%
22	yue gu wang	Table Tennis	0.90%
25	ronald susilo	Badminton	0.82%
43	bryan tay	Swimming	0.34%
63	lynette lim	Swimming	0.20%
116	calvin kang	Athletics
162	li tao	Swimming
260	terence koh	Sailing

Singapore
International Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Country	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
1	michael phelps	USA	Swimming	13.15%
2	usain bolt	Jamaica	Athletics	4.11%
3	ana ivanovic	Serbia	Tennis	3.83%
4	rafael nadal	Spain	Tennis	3.77%
5	maria sharapova	Russia	Tennis	3.58%
6	yining zhang	China	Table Tennis	3.18%
7	roger federer	Switzerland	Tennis	2.62%
8	ronaldinho	Brazil	Football	2.14%
10	shawn johnson	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	2.06%
11	leo	Brazil	Football	1.92%

UK
Local Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
3	victoria pendleton	Cycling	3.44%
5	paula radcliffe	Athletics	2.23%
6	rebecca adlington	Swimming	2.18%
7	kelly sotherton	Athletics	2.07%
9	chris hoy	Cycling	1.74%
11	gail emms	Badminton	1.61%
12	andy murray	Tennis	1.52%
14	rebecca romero	Cycling	1.37%
17	beth tweddle	Artistic Gymnastics	1.26%
20	thomas daley	Diving	0.99%

UK
International Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Country	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
1	michael phelps	USA	Swimming	6.03%
2	usain bolt	Jamaica	Athletics	5.84%
4	shawn johnson	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	2.67%
8	rafael nadal	Spain	Tennis	1.75%
10	nastia liukin	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	1.72%
13	leo	Brazil	Football	1.38%
15	amanda beard	USA	Swimming	1.35%
16	roger federer	Switzerland	Tennis	1.28%
18	alicia sacramone	USA	Artistic Gymnastics	1.25%
19	jo	Brazil	Football	1.21%

US
Local Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
1	michael phelps	Swimming	17.11%
2	shawn johnson	Artistic Gymnastics	8.57%
3	alicia sacramone	Artistic Gymnastics	6.69%
4	nastia liukin	Artistic Gymnastics	4.95%
5	amanda beard	Swimming	4.30%
7	dara torres	Swimming	3.08%
8	kerri walsh	Beach Volleyball	2.54%
9	lolo jones	Athletics	2.29%
10	natalie coughlin	Swimming	1.81%
12	ryan lochte	Swimming	1.45%

US
International Athletes

Rank	Athlete	Country	Sport	% of Portfolio Traffic
11	usain bolt	Jamaica	Athletics	1.64%
13	kate walsh	Great Britain	Hockey	1.40%
14	laure manaudou	France	Swimming	0.92%
15	maria sharapova	Russia	Tennis	0.91%
17	stephanie rice	Australia	Swimming	0.68%
19	leo	Brazil	Football	0.65%
22	roger federer	Switzerland	Tennis	0.56%
25	ronaldinho	Brazil	Football	0.46%
31	rafael nadal	Spain	Tennis	0.39%
38	james avery	Canada	baseball	0.35%

As Robin pointed out the British emerged above Australia on the Medal Count, we've all seen the medal tally recalculated and indexed against populations, but, I have my own way of doing things and have decided to stack it up against the online populations of each country (source: www.internetstats.com) .. and see how the British performed! The lower the number the better the performance.

Maybe better luck in London for the British, on current calculations they'd need to win 197 medals to top the count .. not in my lifetime!

Roll on Vancouver 2010!

Follow Hitwise Asia Pacific on Twitter.

Posted by Alan Long at 10:32 AM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Beijing 2008 | Entertainment | Olympics | Search | Sport

TrackBack

TrackBack URL:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/951.

Comments

Post a comment

If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember me Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)