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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Fast moving search terms: LHC, big bang, Andy Murray and XL

September 15, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were:

1. large hardron collider
2. hurricane ike
3. lhc
4. xl
5. big bang
6. tour of britain
7. itv f1
8. andy murray
9. black hole
10. hadron collider

No surprise to see the Large Hadron Collider at number one, particularly given that it received the Google Doodle treatment last week. There were five LHC-related terms in the top last week, including both ‘big bang’ and ‘black hole’. As you can see from the chart below, searches for both these scientific terms reached very clear record highs last week.

UK Internet searches for black hole and big bang.png

Elsewhere there was another flurry of sports-related terms, with ‘tour of britain’, ‘itv f1’ and ‘andy murray’ all making the top 10. Following his almost victory at the US Open, searches for British tennis star reached a new high, overtaking even the peak experienced during Wimbledon. Just imagine what might happen if he actually won a Grand Slam title…

UK Internet searches for Andy Murray wimbledon american open 2008 chart.png

Following the collapse of airline Zoom a couple of weeks ago, last week Britain’s third largest tour operator XL experienced a similar fate. ‘xl’ was the fourth fastest moving search last week, although in cases like this the most interesting story is often who benefitted from the company’s collapse. The chart below illustrates the top downstream websites visited after xl.com last week, and the list is quite different to the Zoom one we published a couple of weeks ago. Whereas that was dominated by competitor airlines (many of which were linked to from the Zoom homepage), XL’s list is topped by the Civil Aviation Authority. The travel companies that received most traffic were Thomson Holidays, Travel City Direct and First Choice.

websites visited after xl following collapse civil aviation google thomson bbc travel city first choice 2008.png

Another travel company that suffered last week, although for a very different reason, was Eurostar. Looking at its top downstream sites last week, consumer behaviour was different again. This time the top site was Google UK, presumably popular with people looking for news to make alternative travel plans. The top travel sites that benefitted were Rail Europe and National Rail, with easyjet the highest ranked airline. The other interesting thing about these lists is the social aspect: Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) and Facebook appear in both of these lists and in Zoom’s clickstream.

websites visited after eurostar following fire google hotmail eurotunnel bbc facebook.png