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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Fast moving search terms: Strictly Come Dancing, Pierrepoint, Most Haunted

September 01, 2008

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

1. strictly come dancing
2. us open
3. bournemouth air show
4. www.bebo.co.uk
5. most haunted live
6. albert pierrepoint
7. most haunted
8. you tube.com
9. euromillions
10. hurricane gustav

Last week the BBC announced the names of the 16 contestants competing in this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contest, with newsreader John Sergeant and former Eastenders star Jessie Wallis amongst the most talked about stars. In terms of sending traffic to the official BBC Strictly Come Dancing Website, which was the 39th most visited in our TV category last week, the most searched for contestants were actress Cherie Lunghi and model / TV presenter Lisa Snowden.

The BBC have extended Strictly’s run by a couple of weeks this year, and the initial search data implies that this may be a good decision. The series doesn’t start until September 13th, but last week there were over three times as many searches for ‘strictly come dancing’ than during the opening week last year. If you’re interested in the show (or of a gambling disposition), keep and eye on the blog. We’ll be following the show’s progress, hoping to match last year’s successful prediction of the eventual winner.

UK Internet searches for strictly come dancing 2005 2006 2007 2008.png

TV-related terms in general did well last week, with ‘most haunted live’ and ‘most haunted’ both referring to the hit paranormal TV program aired on the Living family of channels. The most interesting TV-related term in the list, however, is ‘albert pierrepoint’, who was one of Britain’s last hangmen. He appears on the list after a film biopic about him, Pierrepoint (starring Timothy Spall), was shown on TV last week.

This is nice of example of how a TV programme (in this case the network premiere of a film) can still generate public interest / debate these multi-channel times, something that should warm the hearts of people nostalgic for era defining shows such as Cathy Come Home. 42% of people searching for ‘albert pierrepoint’ over the 4 weeks ending August 30th went to Wikipedia, and it was the nineteenth most popular search term sending traffic to the online encyclopaedia over the same period.

Elsewhere, ‘us open’ refers to the golf tournament, while Bournemouth Air Show led to an increase in air show-related searches, albeit a smaller peak than in July as a result of Farnborough. The appearance of both ‘www.bebo.co.uk’ and ‘you tube.com’ in the top 10 illustrates not only the popularity of both sites, but also the importance branded URL search. Google News UK and US weather websites National Hurricane Center and the Weather Channel were the main beneficiaries of searches for ‘hurricane gustav’. Finally, a Euromillions rollover jackpot led to the second largest level of traffic to both the Euromillions and National Lottery homepages this year.

UK Internet traffic to the Euro millions and national lottery lotto homepages.png

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