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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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« September 2008 | October 2008 | November 2008 »
X Factor vs. Strictly Come Dancing 2008
October 30, 2008
The annual pre-Christmas battle for Saturday night tea time TV supremacy is well under way. In the red corner: ITV’s The X Factor, with Cheryl Cole replacing Sharon Osbourne on the judging panel. In the blue corner: the BBC’s Strictly... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM
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In Categories BBC | Celebrities | Demographics | News and Media | Search | TV | Video | Women
Economic downturn benefits budget travel and cruises
October 29, 2008
UK Internet traffic to travel websites fell by 4.6% between September 2007 and September 2008, but certain sectors are thriving despite, or in some cases because of, the squeeze on household budgets. UK Internet visits to a Hitwise custom category... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 07:00 AM
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In Categories Demographics | Economy | Search | Travel
What comfort food recipes tell us about UK search behaviour
October 28, 2008
Last week Heather Hopkins pointed out that food sites are weathering the financial storm in the US. We like to encourage (internal!) plagiarism at Hitwise, so in that spirit I decided to carry out some similar analysis of the UK... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 03:00 PM
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In Categories Food | Search
Kerry Katona and YouTube
October 27, 2008
Following her much talked about appearance on ITV’s This Morning show last week, searches for ‘kerry katona’ have gone through the roof. One website that received a lot of traffic from searches for the former Atomic Kitten singer was YouTube.... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 03:00 PM
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In Categories Celebrities | Fast moving search terms | Music | Search | Video
DIY and gardening content online
October 23, 2008
Last month we showed how traffic to House and Garden retail websites has been increasing, despite – or, perhaps more accurately, because of - the credit crunch. Both DIY and furniture retailers are benefitting from this boom, but what about... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:00 PM
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In Categories News and Media | Property | Weather
Second hand goods, classifieds websites and Freecycle beating the credit crunch
October 22, 2008
The number of UK Internet searches containing the word ‘second hand’ has increased by 22% over the last 12 months, as UK consumers look for new ways to beat the credit crunch online. During the 12 weeks ending 11 October... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:00 AM
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In Categories Automotive | Economy | Environment | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Yahoo!, Google and MSN: news services compared
October 20, 2008
After we published our blog post on news aggregators last month, one commenter asked why we hadn’t included Yahoo! News? I answered that Yahoo’s News service is different from Google’s because is contains its own content, rather than links to... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 02:30 PM
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In Categories Email | Google | News and Media
Supermarkets continue to grow online
October 17, 2008
While looking at the fastest growing retail sectors for this month’s retail webinar, we noticed that our Grocery and Alcohol has been doing well this year. As the chart below illustrates, its share of Internet visits has been increasing gradually... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:00 PM
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In Categories Food | Gadgets | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Charity websites weather the credit crunch
October 15, 2008
Today is Blog Action Day, and this year the subject is poverty. Alan has already written an excellent post about the online charity landscape in Australia, so I thought that I would do the same for the UK. The most... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
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In Categories Charities | Christmas | Demographics | Economy | Mosaic lifestyle | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds
Facebook is number 2 website, but the growth of social networks is slowing
October 10, 2008
Of all the websites visited by UK Internet users in September, Facebook was the second most popular after Google UK. The number one social network in Britain received 3.16% of all UK Internet visits last month, equivalent to one in... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM
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In Categories Social networks
Pasta Hut vs. Pizza Hut
October 09, 2008
Pizza Hut made the headlines earlier in the week after rebranding itself as Pasta Hut in the UK. If the move really is just a clever bit of PR, as some people suspect, then it seems to have worked. In... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM
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In Categories Branding | Food
The cult of Robert Peston and BBC blogs
October 07, 2008
Is Robert Peston - "the face of the credit crunch" - the hardest working man at the BBC? The corporation’s business editor starts his day at breakfast time on the Today Programme and doesn’t seem to finish until bed time... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
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In Categories BBC | Blogs | Economy | News and Media
Irish banks benefit as UK online banking traffic reaches an all time high
October 06, 2008
The financial turbulence of the last couple of weeks has resulted in a surge in traffic to online banking sites. UK Internet traffic to websites in our Banks and Financial Institutions category increased by 9.2% last week, reaching an all... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 05:00 PM
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In Categories Economy | Financial Services | Search
The role of news aggregators in the UK
October 02, 2008
News aggregators come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from straight forward aggregators (e.g. Google News) to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious. When creating a custom category of the top sites in the UK we... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:26 AM
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In Categories BBC | Blogs | Google | News and Media | Social networks
