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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Top 10 UK search terms: social networks dominate the list

April 14, 2008

We have just announced the winners of the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards 2007, so congratulations to all of the websites that placed within their industry top 10. In addition to the top websites, we also announced the top 10 most searched for brands of 2007, and the results make for interesting reading.

Top 10 most searched for terms in the uk 2007 2008.png

As you can see from the table above, there were four new entrants into the top this 10 year (highlighted in green). That all four of these terms are the brand names of social networks / Web 2.0 sites nicely illustrates how significant social networking has become in the UK. Half of the 10 most searched for terms in the UK last year – ‘bebo’, ‘youtube’, ‘facebook’, ‘myspace’ and ‘you tube’ came from this sector, and the volume of searches for the top terms continues to grow.

Looking at the rest of the list, ‘ebay’ remains at the top, but other retail-related terms have fallen down the rankings: ‘argos’ and ‘amazon’ remain in the top 10, albeit placed lower, while ‘easyjet’, ‘autotrader’ and ‘ebay uk’ have all dropped out. "Old" media has also suffered, with ‘bbc’ falling three places and ‘cbbc’ departing the top 10. However, it’ll be interesting to see if the continuing popularity of the Beeb’s "new" media iPlayer service leads to a revival in the 2008 list.

Update: Jack Schofield at the Guardian picked up on our list of top websites in his blog, and the comments section contains some interesting debate.