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John Prescott and What Drives Consumer Search Behaviour
July 11, 2006
A poll in today's Times reveals that 70% of voters think John Prescott should resign. This comes after a series of scandals from titillating reports of affairs to the row over the hospitality from Mr. Anschutz, who is bidding to open a supercasino at the Millennium Dome. According to Hitwise Search Intelligence, searches for "john prescott" increased nearly 40-fold last week and ended the week with twice the volume as searches for "wayne rooney".
Sex sells, right? Indeed, the revelations of Mr. Prescott's affair with Tracey Temple caused a surge in searches for "john prescott" and her teary TV appearance added fuel to the fire. Dorneywood led to a minor blip and last week's news about hospitality received from Mr. Anschutz and fresh allegations from political bloggers caused the greatest surge of all. The combined effect of several scandals seems to have created a sort of momentum behind UK internet searches, but the affairs remain of greatest interest (more on that below).
Drew B had a great post last week on the impact that blogging can have on the UK political landscape. Iain Dale has been stirring up the controversy with posts making allegations of additional affairs and gropings. As the above chart illustrates, searches for "iain dale" have been increasing in recent weeks and he even eclipsed John Prescott in share of searches in the week ending 17th June through the week ending 1st July. His blog is also now receiving a larger share of UK visits than either the website for the Tory party or Labour. You might think this is a direct result of the link at the bottom of his Comment is Free post on the Guardian's website, but in fact The Guardian accounted for less than 2% of visits to Iain Dale's blog last week. Search engines accounted for 24% and other blogs accounted for 19%.
But what does this tell us? Are bloggers influencing the political agenda? It appears they are. Visits to Iain Dale's blog have overtaken those to established political party websites. UK consumers are actively reading blogs, moving among blogs following the links. While the news media have been madly covering the supercasino scandal, consumers are searching for news of John Prescott's affairs. The following table shows the top 10 terms entered into search engines that include the keywords "john prescott", and illustrates the interest in the affairs.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 11:56 AM
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Comments
Excellent analysis Heather! Thanks for pointing me to it.
Posted by Drew Benvie | July 11, 2006 02:01 AM
Hi Heather,
Any chance of droping in http://5thnovember.blogspot.com into the traffic graph as Guidos the man who "broke" the other mistress. Fair and balanced and all that ;-)
John
Posted by John Wards | July 11, 2006 02:09 AM
I just posted a follow on post that includes Guido Fawkes' blog in the chart. It shows that Guido Fawkes' blog does attract a larger share of visits than Iain Dale's blog. As for whether Guido Fawkes exerts more influence than Times columnists... that's trickier to measure and I'm not sure share of visits would be the right measure. I am open to suggestions, however... such as charting share of UK searches for Guido Fawkes versus a particular columnist.
Posted by Heather Hopkins | July 11, 2006 04:17 AM
Guido versus various columnists Peter Riddell, Michael White, Polly Toynbee you name 'em.
Please...
Posted by Guido Fawkes | July 11, 2006 10:41 AM
Excellent analysis, Heather. do you have any information on Guido Fawkes traffic - he is claiming more influence than Times columnists in the Guardian - does your data back that up?
Posted by Antony Mayfield | July 11, 2006 01:47 AM