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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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The King, the Angel and the Hoax.

June 30, 2009

Pop culture is a substantial driver of online behaviour, and the untimely death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson and the passing of Charlie’s Angels Farah Fawcett last week provided celebrity websites with large single day gains of Australian Internet visits. While actor Jeff Goldblum’s death on set in New Zealand was prematurely reported it also added to media frenzy and online activity.

The King
Michael Jackson’s death has seen sales of his music dominate the Amazon best seller list (25 of the top 50 CDs on 29 June) and six of the top 10 albums on iTunes, it has also propelled celebrity websites up the rankings locally.

As news of Michael Jackson’s death hit Australia on Friday 26 June 2009, the Hitwise Lifestyle - Personalities category experienced an increase in daily traffic share of 61%, while Music - Bands and Artists increased 89% and News and Media – Print increased 13% . TMZ.com credited with breaking the news first jumped 750 rankings to 84, while perezhilton.com improved its ranking to 133, increases of 848.4% and 49.2% respectively in market share of visits by Australian Internet users on the same day. Michael Jackson's site www.michaeljackson.com, rocketed from a ranking of 73,911 to become the 134th most visited website in Australia on 26 June 2009.

Searches terms / phrases containing ‘michael jackson’ jumped from 296 during week ending 20 June 2009 to 8,569 during week ending 27 June 2009, indicating the breadth of information Australians wanted. Search queries included information about his songs, how he died, his children, his planned tour, pictures, his biography, video and lyrics (no doubt almost every cover band in the world played a Michael Jackson song over the weekend in tribute).

A total of 1,407 sites received traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009, up from 33 the week prior, notably Google News received a higher share of visits from these searches than the key News and Media – Print websites combined, providing it with the largest single day share of Internet Visits by Australian in the past three years.

The leading websites receiving traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009 were;

The Angel
Leading to her death, Farah Fawcett one of the original Charlie’s Angels in the 70’s TV series of the same name and former Playboy Bunny was also the subject to media attention offline and online over the past weeks and months. This included the recent announcement of the intended marriage of Fawcett to long time beau Ryan O’Neal.

Search activity for the term ‘farah fawcett’ increased 30x during the week ending 27 June, 2009 compared to the week prior and featured at number 4 in the fastest moving search terms last week. There were 76 search term variations relating to her name including playboy, movies, latest news, her son and cancer.

Google News and Wikipedia again became the focus of searchers over more traditional news sources such as the Australian newspapers websites, with some international websites also taking share away from local publishers.

The Hoax
While Jackson and Fawcett have been in the news for various reasons – Jackson for his anticipated London shows and Fawcett for her brave battle against cancer, Jeff Goldblum had no reason to be featuring prominently while reportedly on a film shoot in New Zealand.

Goldblum’s death reportedly originated from the website FakeAWish.com. When a celebrity name is entered into the website, a news story is produced under a false news agency name ‘Global Associated News’.

The story caused search activity on Jeff Goldblum to increase 572 times in week ending 27 June 2009, 91% higher than searches on Farah Fawcett, but 75% less than Michael Jackson searches. Again Wikipedia and Google news were the prominent recipients of searches for ‘jeff goldblum’.

The three events last week had an interesting flow on effect, highlighting the online behaviour of Australian Internet users. Twitter and Google News had their largest single day share of visits propelled by the day’s news events.

Google News experienced a single day increase on 26 June 2009 of 93% and Twitter increased 13% as the news and tributes for Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett spread through the web and the hoax was uncovered.