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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Fast moving search terms: British Gas fallout, Beatrix Potter and diamond geezers
August 04, 2008
The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were:
1. beatrix potter
2. diamond geezer
3. southern electric
4. play.com uk
5. bbc cricket
6. u switch
7. carol vorderman
8. racing post
9. currys uk
10. attheraces
‘beatrix potter’ appearing at the top of list is another case of a Google Holiday Logo driving searches. Last week was the anniversary of the author and illustrator’s birth, and result of her Google Doodle. Searches for ‘diamond geezer’ increased thanks to a notable appearance by the retailer on the BBC show Dragons’ Den last week. Traffic to the site shot up 28 fold the day after the program was aired, while a blog with a similar name also experienced a jump in traffic as misguided searchers ended up at diamondgeezer.blogspot.com.
Last week’s prices rises from British Gas were responsible for two of the terms on the list, ‘southern electric’ and ‘u switch’. Following its announcement, traffic to the Centrica owned company’s homepage shot up last week, but it seems likely that a lot of those new visitors were not exactly satisfied customers. Our clickstream data shows that one in 10 people leaving the British Gas website last week went to a competitor, up from one in 15 the previous week. As you can see from the chart below, both the price comparison site uSwitch and British Gas competitor Southern Electric benefited from the increase in people looking for new energy deals.
Elsewhere in the top 10, the increase in searches for ‘play.com.uk’ and ‘currys uk’ were a result of sales at the retailers, while the jump in searches for ‘racing post’ and ‘attheraces’ point to an increase in traffic to gambling websites ahead of the Olympics. Searches for ‘bbc cricket’ were driven by the poor showing England’s cricket term in the test series against South Africa. UK internet traffic to our Sports – Cricket category reached its highest level since England’s Ashes win back in 2005, and it seems likely that level will be maintained following Michael Vaughan’s emotional resignation as England captain over the weekend.
Another resignation, that of Carol Vorderman from Countdown, was responsible for the seventh placed term in the list. Looking at the search term suggestions list, the second placed term, ‘myleene klass to replace carol vorderman’, relates to the speculation surrounding who will replace the Ms Vordeman on the cult Channel 4 quiz show. This also contributed to the increase in traffic to betting sites last week.
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Posted by Robin Goad at 12:00 PM
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In Categories Economy | Fast moving search terms | Olympics | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Sport | TV | Women
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Comments
Hi Maggie - thanks for the comment.
Hitwise has this very data in Australia! I've passed on your message to our research team there. In the meantime, you should check out their blogs:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/alan-long/
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/sandra-hanchard/
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | August 11, 2008 08:01 AM
I find these statistics very interesting. It would be great to get similar details on data in Australia - can you let me know of any websites similar to yours down under?
Posted by Maggie Ryder | August 11, 2008 04:42 AM