Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Olympics – Aussies vs. Poms and most searched for athletes

August 21, 2008

I must admit that I wasn’t very excited about the Olympics before it started, but like lots of other Brits I’ve become a shallow fair weather fan following the success of Team GB. Apologies to our colleagues in Melbourne and Sydney (and as well as the Aussies in our London office), but the success all the sweeter due to the fact that we are currently six gold medals ahead of the Australians ;-)

As Alan pointed out a couple of weeks ago, in the run up to the games online interest was greatest in Australia and New Zealand. Using visits to the official Beijing Olympics site as a measure of online interest, Australians are still more interested than Brits. On Tuesday the site - which is the largest recipient of searches for ‘olympics’ in both countries - ranked 105th in the UK vs. 42nd in Australia, where its market share was 3 times higher than in the UK. Maybe the site’s popularity down under is a result of all those Australians checking to see how much further they’ve fallen down the medal table…

On a related note, yesterday Heather Hopkins provided a list of the most searched for Olympians in the US, with Michael Phelps unsurprisingly at the top. The record breaking American swimmer was also most searched for athlete in the UK last week. Here is the full top 10 based on last week’s data - it’ll be interesting to see where Usain Bolt appears next week.

1. Michael Phelps (swimming)
2. Tom Daley (diving)
3. Rebecca Adlington (swimming)
4. Hannah Miley (swimming)
5. Emma Pooley (cycling)
6. Tonia Couch (diving)
7. Charlotte Craddock (hockey)
8. Bradley Saunders (boxing)
9. Liam Tancock (swimming)
10. Chris Hoy (cycling)

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Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Olympics | Search | Sport