About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.

Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

Analyst Weblog

« Search Engines Larger than Adult Sites - Stats from London Internet Peeps Event | Weather and Delayed Trains Cause Flurry of Activity Online »

Council Tax Cashback Strikes a Nerve with UK Consumers

February 01, 2007

Last week, Martin Lewis appeared in a prime time TV documentary informing consumers that they may be eligible for a rebate on their Council Tax. The story and subsequent news release received high profile coverage in the tabloids and the nationals. Richard Barber who recently joined Money Saving Expert pinged me today and suggested I look at Hitwise data. The results were pretty interesting and offer an excellent case study of the power of cross-media promotion.

We saw a more than ten fold increase in the share of UK internet searches for "council tax" last week. The following chart shows the share of UK internet searches for "council tax" - and illustrates the sudden increase quite nicely. To give this some context - the share of searches for "council tax" were 40% higher than for "paris hilton", overtaking the celebrity for the first time in the past 2 years (as far back as we report our data).
Council Tax Search Chart.png

The way that consumers were searching for Council Tax also changed last week. The following tables show the results of a weekly Search Term Suggestion report for "council tax", listing the top 10 search terms that included the words "council tax" in the weeks to 27th January 2007 and 20th January 2007. Notice the prominence of "bands" and "valuations".
Council Tax Searches.png

When consumers searched for "council tax" last week, 38% went to the Valuation Office Agency and 13% to Money Saving Expert. The share of visits to the Valuation Office Agency were up 30 times, and the site ranked as the #2 Property website and the #3 Government website based on share of UK internet visits last week. (This may explain the message on the VOA homepage and account for the site outages last week.)

Interestingly, the issue seems to have attracted the attention of silver surfers in particular. In the past four weeks, 44% of visits to the Valuation Office Agency were from those aged 55+ -- twice the share compared with the four weeks ending 20th January 2007. Money Saving Expert also saw the average age of its visitors increase, with 30% of visits coming from those aged 55+ last week, up 62% week on week.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 03:04 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Banks and Financial Institutions