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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: News and Media

Occupy Wall Street Sites Win Diverse Audience

November 23, 2011

As the Occupy movement passed its two month anniversary last week, Occupy-related sites (e.g occupywallstreet.org) experienced a resurgence in market share of visits. The initial peak in searches for variations of “occupy” and traffic to Occupy-related sites occurred in the... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 11:29 AM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

Bin Laden News Drives Traffic Peak

May 05, 2011

While some Americans learned the news Sunday night via Twitter or the announcement from President Obama, curiosity and questions continued well into Monday. The daily visits to News & Media websites reached a three year high for the second time... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 06:00 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories News and Media

British news attracting US Royal Wedding fans

April 21, 2011

NBC has scaled back its planned coverage of the Royal Wedding in order to avoid potential “viewer fatigue”, an interesting change of strategy given the success & interest of The Today Show’s wedding-focused blog, “The Windsor Knot”. Though the official... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 05:20 PM | (0)
In Categories News and Media | Royal Wedding

Impact of paywall on NYTimes.com

April 11, 2011

After months of speculation, the paywall for The New York Times went live at 2pm on Monday, March 28th, which limits online readers (non-print subscribers) to 20 articles each month. For smartphone and tablet applications, only the top news section... Continue reading...

Interest in Glenn Beck Increases with Departure

April 08, 2011

Following the announcement of the end of Glenn Beck’s Fox News program, there has been discussion of the impact of Beck’s declining ratings on the decision. Indeed, ratings for The Glenn Beck Program fell to an average of 1.9mm in... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 10:55 AM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

News visits soar after earthquake and tsunami in Japan

March 15, 2011

Many in the US woke to the news of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Friday morning along with tsunami warnings for Hawaii and the west coast. As news and videos of the natural disaster spread, visits to... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 06:21 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories News and Media | Video | YouTube

Masters of the Sheeniverse

March 03, 2011

It’s already acknowledged that recent incidents in Charlie Sheen’s life and his subsequent barrage of interviews have created an online feeding frenzy. Indeed, Sheen has won the Guinness World Record for fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 06:24 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Fast Moving Search Terms | News and Media | Twitter

Egyptian unrest boosts traffic to Al Jazeera English

February 17, 2011

With the start of the protests and demonstrations in Egypt, visits to the English Al Jazeera website have increased as many in the US turned to the Middle Eastern news source for coverage. The volume of visits increased 6x on... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 10:19 AM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

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... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:09 PM | (0)
In Categories News and Media | Search Strategies

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... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:04 PM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

Online news aggregators – friend or foe?

April 08, 2009

This week kicked off with the Associated Press voicing concerns about how websites obtain permission to distribute content and share revenues. A debate has sparked about the ‘fair use’ doctrine (publishing a headline and/or sentence from story) and tracking the... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:41 PM | (3) | (0)
In Categories News and Media | Search Engines

Inauguration Day Stats

January 22, 2009

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was a major event for US Internet users on Tuesday since many needed to rely upon online streaming on news websites to view the event from work.... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:54 PM | (0)
In Categories Election2008 | News and Media | Politics | Social Networking

Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair Photos Drive Huge Traffic Spike

May 01, 2008

The controversial photo spread of 15 year old Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana) in Vanity Fair has been causing quite a commotion in the media since last weekend. The market share of visits to Vanityfair.com increased over 20x on Monday... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 08:54 AM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

What scandal? Interest wanes for most

March 25, 2008

Articles on AdAge.com and New York magazine’s website yesterday discussed (sometimes mockingly) the short window of opportunity for ‘scandalites’ to leverage their fame into a revenue opportunity. I figured I would test the hypothesis through search data to see if... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:01 PM | (0)
In Categories News and Media

Digg.com acquisition rumors again – who could benefit most?

March 10, 2008

Rumors are circulating once again that Digg.com is up for sale, this time naming Google and Microsoft as likely bidders for the company. And while these may just be rumors, it makes sense why both would be interested – Microsoft... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 10:26 AM | (2) | (0)
In Categories News and Media

Weather.com for sale - anyone looking to buy loyalty?

January 04, 2008

Landmark Communications has announced the sale of The Weather Channel and the accompanying website Weather.com, which may be worth up to $5 billion (cited by The New York Times). Several media conglomerates will probably step up to the plate to... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Heather Dougherty at 05:34 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories News and Media

Heather Dougherty

Director, Research at Hitwise.