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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Balloon boy floats into popular searches

October 21, 2009

Americans are fascinated with the story of the ‘balloon boy’ as facts unfold in the highly unusual tale of a boy floating away in a mylar balloon - only to be discovered in the attic three days later. Searches jumped last week for ‘balloon boy’ related news, with ‘balloon boy’, ‘boy in the balloon’ and ‘balloon boy hoax’ leading the search term variations in terms of overall volume.

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Among the search term variations for ‘balloon boy’, there were several mentions of the coverage from several television outlets, including the “Today Show’, ‘Good Morning America’. This could be a good opportunity to drive traffic to their websites although a big driver around many of the searches were due to the vomiting incidents that took place during the interviews.

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Apparently vomiting may make good TV and online video viewing because many of the searches from ‘balloon boy’ were going to YouTube last week. The top recipient from searches was Google News followed by CNN.com and Yahoo! News. All of the traffic to the top 10 websites was purely organic, so there could be some opportunities to steal visitors via paid search if the fascination with the balloon boy continues.

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