Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America
Analyst Weblog
Top Michael Jackson Song Searches
July 01, 2009
Immediately after Michael Jackson's death, sales surged as fans purchased music and DVDs from the King of Pop in both physical and digital formats. Jackson's music quickly topped the sales charts on retailers like iTunes and Amazon. Last week, the search term 'michael jackson albums' ranked 16th among the search terms driving traffic to
For retailers and publishers looking to prioritize merchandise and content, one measure to predict demand among consumers is through search data. When looking at the variations of searches that included the search term 'michael jackson', we classified the top 1000 terms from the week ending June 27, 2009, to find the most popular song & album and lyric searches. Many searches were very broad, looking for the 'best' and 'top' michael jackson songs, but the specific songs & albums that were searched most were Thriller and Off The Wall. Searches for lyrics were also common, with the most popular being "Beat It" and "Billie Jean".
The top 5 songs & albums based on the top 1000 search terms including 'michael jackson' for the week ending June 27, 2009.
Top 5 Songs & Albums
1. Thriller
2. Off The Wall
3. You Are Not Alone
4. Bad
5. Ben
Top 5 Lyrics
1. Beat It
2. Billie Jean
3. You Are Not Alone
4. Bad
5. Ben
Posted by Heather Dougherty at 09:56 PM
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In Categories Music | Video | YouTube
Michael Jackson Draws Record Traffic to TMZ
June 29, 2009
TMZ was the first to break the news about Michael Jackson’s death last Thursday and scooped all of the major news outlets. As a result, traffic to TMZ reached a 3 year high, with visits increasing 5x in volume from the previous day. The market share of visits increased 18% above the previous high on February 20, 2009, which took place after TMZ published photos of a bruised Rihanna following the assault by Chris Brown. TMZ was 60th among all websites on Thursday when ranked by the market share of visits, up from 305th on Wednesday, June 24th. The story also caused a surge of new visitors to TMZ, with 61% of the visits coming from new (defined as having not visiting the website in the past 30 days) visitors on the day of Jackson's death, up from 19% the previous day.
While TMZ clearly had an advantage in being first to report the story, in comparison, the other news sources captured a higher share of visits than TMZ. On Thursday, the top 4 News & Media websites ranked by visits were Yahoo! News, CNN, MSNBC and Google News. MSNBC and CNN received the highest spike in visits from the previous day, increasing 67% and 64%, respectively.
Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:04 PM
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In Categories News and Media
Twittering the Iran Election
June 23, 2009
Following the elections that took place in Iran on June 12, Twitter has become one of the most popular mediums for distributing information about the protests. Daily visits to Twitter.com (excludes mobile & desktop applications) increased 13% on June 12th as compared to the previous Friday and traffic jumped 23% Wednesday, June 17th from news and photos of the massive rallies taking place in Iran.
Among all of the search terms driving traffic to Twitter.com in the US, ‘iran election’ ranked #13 out of 4,303 last week. Conversely, Twitter.com received the highest share of clicks from queries for ‘iran election’, one of the most common hashtags for the coverage, even ranking above Google News.
In addition to Twitter, YouTube has also become another outlet for news as video coverage of the protest activities have been uploaded. The popularity of both Twitter and YouTube showcase the ability to disseminate information when many major news outlets are unable.
Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:52 PM
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In Categories Twitter | YouTube
Back to School Season Starts Soon
June 18, 2009
School is barely out for the summer, but the Back to School season is right around the corner again. Search queries that include the phrase ‘back to school’ begin to ramp up during the month of July, peak in early August, and end in mid-September. Last year, the Back to School season was negatively impacted by consumers pulling back on spending, after suffering through high gas prices during the summer and the imminent economic downturn.
Last year’s peak of searches containing ‘back to school’ occurred during the week ending August 16, 2008. The three dominant themes within the top ten search terms were fashion & hairstyles, activity & craft ideas and sweepstakes. The success rates (meaning the % of the searches that resulted in a visit to a website) for the sweepstakes related searches highlight the awareness of the promotions and ease with which consumers were able to seek out the sweepstakes online with meaningful results. The share of traffic being driven by paid clicks was only 4%, suggesting that there are many opportunities to employ a paid search campaign for marketers looking to target this audience.
Please join us next Wednesday, June 24th for a webinar with more analysis focused on Back to School Planning.
Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:05 PM
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In Categories Back to School | Search Strategies
