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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

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Chris Benoit Tops UK Searches

July 02, 2007

This morning, I had never heard of Chris Benoit, but it appears I may be alone. The search term "chris benoit" ranked #28 among all search terms last week in the UK, and was second only to "weather" among non-branded searches (i.e. those that don't contain a brand name in the search phrase). For those of you, like me, who are unfamiliar with wrestling, Chris Benoit is a World Wresting Entertainment (WWE) wrestler, who was found dead in his home after apparently killing his wife and son last week.

The top top site visited for searches for "chris benoit" last week was Wikipedia and the term was the second highest search term in volume of visits sent to the online encyclopaedia last week, after "wikipedia". The star's death also pushed the WWE website into the top 100 last week, with visits increasing 50% week on week.

I have had my eye on WWE for some time now. The website keeps popping up in our fast mover reports and the term "wwe" keeps popping up in search term lists. In June, the site ranked 100 among All Categories of websites. That is up from 160 in May and 193 in January.

So who is so interested in wrestling? It appears that the young and lower income are the biggest fans. In the past four weeks, 31% of UK visits to WWE.com were from those aged 18-24 with this age group 77% over-represented on the website relative to the online population. According to Experian's Mosaic Profiles, groups that tend to earn lower household incomes are also over-indexed on the site, including the groups Municipal Dependency, Ties of Community and Blue Collar Enterprise. These groups all include families living on lower incomes and they also tend to live in smaller cities (according to offline statistics compiled by Experian).

The following chart illustrates the rise in searches for "chris benoit" using Paris Hilton as the benchmark. The recent and steady rise in searches for "wwe" is also illustrated.
Chris Benoit Searches.png