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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Credit crunch dominates fast moving search terms

September 22, 2008

Last week’s fastest moving search terms were:

1. ryder cup
2. hbos
3. northern rock
4. hbos share price
5. moto gp
6. share prices
7. aig
8. ftse
9. ftse 100
10. bloomberg

As you would expect, the list is dominated by finance related terms: 8 of the top 10 refer in some way to the events of last week. The biggest beneficiaries of these searches were Stocks and Shares sites (traffic increased 32% last week), Business Information websites (23%) and even the banks themselves, which experienced a 9% increase in UK Internet visits.

The individual website that probably benefitted most was Yahoo Finance UK, which experienced a 48% increase in visits. ‘hbos share price’ was the second most important search term sending the website traffic last week, while a number of other finance stocks also appeared in its top 50, including Barclays, Standard Life, Lloyds TSB, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bradford and Bingley. As you would expect, other Yahoo! properties accounted for more than two fifths of this traffic, although Google sites accounted for a further 21%.

UK Internet traffic to Yahoo Fiannce UK during the banking crisis credit crunch 2007 2008 chart.png