Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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August 21, 2007
Total recall: Mattel vs. Nokia
Last week we highlighted the surge in traffic to Mattel’s website following the news that it had recalled millions of toys as a result of safety fears. As the graph below illustrates, UK internet traffic to mattel.com has fallen from its peak last week, but is still above average. And it’s not just Mattel’s main site that was affected – traffic to the UK and US websites of Mattel’s most famous brand, Barbie, both reached their highest levels in over a year last week.
UK internet visits to mattel.com
Mattel’s stock fell following the recall announcement, and in response the company posted a link to shareholder.com on its homepage. Nervous investors must have appreciated this approach, as shareholder.com was the most popular website visited after Mattel’s homepage last week, accounting for 32.04% of downstream traffic.
News and media websites accounted for a third of all traffic sent to Mattel.com last week, with BBC News accounting for 22.98% of upstream traffic alone. The fifth most popular source of upstream traffic was the New York Times, somewhat of a surprise considering that we are talking about UK traffic here. However, a bit of digging into the data revealed the answer: 96% of UK search traffic to nytimes.com from the term 'mattel' came from paid traffic. The paid search strategy clearly worked: 'mattel' was the second most popular search term sending UK traffic to the New York Times last week.
Of the 20 top search terms containing the word 'recall' in the past four weeks, 16 were related to Mattel, its brands or toys in general. Two of the others were related to Nokia, which also announced a product recall last week. There were over twice as many UK searches for 'mattel recall' than for 'nokia battery recall' - an encouraging sign that even in these gadget obsessed times, we still care more for our children than our mobile phones.
Top 20 search terms containing 'recall'
Posted by Robin Goad at 03:17 PM
Posted to Shopping and Classifieds
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