Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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July 24, 2008
Knife crime searches: statistics, prevention and geography
At Hitwise we believe that our search data provides an unprecedented insight into what people are thinking. This information has a huge number of uses, from spotting the latest hot band to measuring the popularity of any number of products, services or brands. However, it can also be used to measure people’s concerns and fears. Following a recent spate of stabbings in the UK (particularly in London) and the media coverage that these events have attracted, people have become more concerned about the threat of knife crime. As a result, searches for the term ‘knife crime’ have increased noticeably over the last few weeks.
For the 4 weeks ending 19 July, ‘knife crime’ was the top search term containing the word ‘crime’, and also the top search term containing the word ‘knife’. The media coverage may have fuelled the fear, but news sites have also been the primary destination of people searching for ‘knife crime’: 49% of searchers ended up at a News and Media website, with the Telegraph, BBC News, Google News UK, the Scotsman, the Daily Mail and MSN News all appearing in the list of top 10 destinations.
However, the top site currently receiving traffic from ‘knife crime’ searches is www.knifecrimes.org, a government website run by the Home Office. The site describes itself as an ‘online knife crime resource’, and there is certainly an appetite from the public for further information on the topic. The table below lists the top 10 (of almost 300 over the last 4 weeks) search terms containing the phrase ‘knife crime’. The most popular terms relate are essentially information requests: ‘knife crime statistics’, knife crime facts’; while ‘stop knife crime’ illustrates a desire from some searchers to do something about the problem.
Worryingly, ‘stop knife’ crime has the lowest success rate of the top 10 terms, implying that there is a lack viable of advice / content out there. ‘knife crime facts’ has a lower success rate than similar terms containing the words ‘stats’ or ‘statistics’; while, strangely, searches for knife crime in London, Britain and the UK all have a lower success rate than searches for ‘knife crime in france’.
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Posted by Robin Goad at 12:00 PM
Posted to BBC | Google | Government | News and Media | Politics | Search
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Comments
Thanks for the information on knife searches, Robin. That's very intersting. I've never thought about searches for crimes before.
We recently wrote an article on crime statistics at Brain Blogger. Did you know that outside the US, there are hardly any statistics on murderous people and acts? And so how does this affect how justice systems in other countries? Does it work as well as it does in the US without the violent information?
We would like to read your comments on our article. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kelly
Posted by: Kelly at July 24, 2008 04:44 PM
My knife crime blog - http://knifecrime.blogspot.com - saw record traffic over the last 2 or 3 weeks, just slowing down a little now.
I work for a search engine marketing company - http://www.fuseo.co.uk - and have used a little of Fuse knowledge to keep my blog at top of Google for search term 'knife crime blog'. Do take a look - I started it after trying to help a restaurant superviser fatally stabbed in a McDonalds...
Posted by: mark chapman at July 27, 2008 08:01 PM
