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Gas Prices Warning Leads to Increase in Visits to Price Comparison Sites
February 16, 2006
Last week, British Gas and Scottish Power announced plans to increase energy prices. British Gas prices will increase by up to one quarter in April and Scottish Gas will increase gas prices 15% and electricity prices 8% as of 1st March 2006. There have been several news stories advising customers to comparison shop, citing services such as USwitch and Simply Switch.
I took a look at Hitwise data to see if there has been an increase in internet activity in the wake of the announcements of increased energy prices. Bill Tancer has looked at this issue in a few blog posts, including one that compared petrol prices in the US to internet searches.
I looked through search terms sending visits to some of the leading price comparison sites and to the Hitwise Utilities industry and found that UK searches for 'gas prices' surged ahead of other popular terms including 'price comparison', 'price comparison websites', 'energy prices' and 'electricity suppliers'. UK Searches for 'gas prices increased 3.5 times the week ending 11th February 2006 compared with the previous week. Searches for 'energy prices' and 'electricity suppliers' also increased, by 76% and 22% respectively.
Market share of UK visits to websites in the Hitwise Utilities category increased 13% last week compared with the week prior and increased 66% year on year. Visits to Utilities websites hit their highest peak in the past 15 months last week. The second highest peak in the past 15 months was in October 2005, coinciding with the previous price increases announced by Scottish Power.
Among the 10 most visited Utilities websites, energywatch experienced the most significant increase in visits last week. The site's share of UK visits doubled in one week. The increase in visits propelled the site from a ranking of 15 the week ending 4th February to 10 the week ending 11th February.
Uswitch was the most visited Utilities website last week, capturing more than a quarter of visits to the category. Uswitch has enjoyed a significant increase in visits, with UK visits doubling year on year last week and increasing 25% week on week. Simply Switch and Energy Linx, other price comparison sites, also enjoyed significant gains of 87% and 61% respectively week on week.
energywatch includes a list of online domestic electricity and gas price comparison services on its website. Ten services are part of the program and sign up to a code of ethics and "are tested and monitored by energywatch to ensure that they are comparing accurate and up to date prices and that they are fully independent of any gas or electricity supplier."
I looked at downstream sites for energy watch to find out if the price comparison sites listed at the top of the directory (ordered alphabetically) would receive the largest share of visits. Interestingly that is not the case. Uswitch received the largest share of downstream visits from energywatch (13%), more than twice as many visits as switch.which.co.uk, the second ranked site based on downstream visits from energy watch. Uswitch and switch.which.co.uk were the last two sites on the list on the energywatch website.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 12:40 AM
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