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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai most searched for Bollywood stars

January 07, 2009

Last week UK Internet searches for a portfolio of 100+ Bollywood stars was 68% higher than a year ago. Here is a list of the top 20 most searched for actors and actresses from that portfolio over the 4 weeks ending 03/01/09.

1. Shahrukh Khan (8.6% of searches)
2. Aishwarya Rai (6.0%)
3. Katrina Kaif (5.8%)
4. Salman Khan (5.6%)
5. Aamir Khan (4.7%)
6. Anushka Sharma (4.5%)
7. Priyanka Chopra (4.2%)
8. Shilpa Shetty (3.6%)
9. Kareena Kapoor (3.1%)
10. Akshay Kumar (2.9%)
11. Imran Khan* (2.6%)
12. John Abraham (2.3%)
13. Hrithik Roshan (2.0%)
14. Bipasha Basu (1.94%)
15. Deepika Padukone (1.7%)
16. Rani Mukherjee (1.6%)
17. Preity Zinta (1.5%)
18. Abhishek Bachchan (1.5%)
19. Shahid Kapoor (1.5%)
20. Kajol (1.4%)

Looking at the search term variations for the most searched for actor (Shahrukh Khan) and actress (Aishwarya Rai) is interesting. For the 4 weeks ending 03/01/09 there were over 350 distinct search terms containing the phrase ‘shahrukh khan’. Most of these focussed on his film career, with words such as ‘movies’, ‘film’, ‘filmography’, ‘imdb’ and ‘songs’ appearing frequently. For Aishwarya Rai the searches were more personal, with words such as ‘pregnant’, ‘biography’, ‘make up’, and ‘photos’ all appearing in the top 10 searches to contain her name. It was notable that the more prurient searches appeared lower down the list than they would with an equivalent ‘western’ female film star.

Despite this recent increase in searches for all things Bollywood, last week was not the peak in searches for Hindi film star. That honour belongs to start of 2007 and the Shilpa Shetty Celebrity Big Brother scandal. For the week ending 03/02/07 there were 6 times as many searches for our Bollywood portfolio than there are now, with Ms. Shetty accounting for almost 70% of that traffic.

UK_bollywood_Internet_searches_2005_2006_2007_2008_2008_chart.png

The table below lists the top 10 sites receiving traffic from our Bollywood portfolio, and two things jump out. The first is that you would get a similar list if you created a portfolio of British or American celebrities – Wikipedia, Google News, YouTube, IMBD, Facebook. In fact, in a similar table for more mainstream (in the UK) celebs, Wikipedia and Google News would probably be less prominent, because other sites - such as newspapers - would be paying for traffic.

And that is the second thing that jumps out from the table: a sense of missed opportunity because almost no-one is bidding on these high volume terms. For the portfolio as a whole, just 0.2% of searchers clicked on a paid result during the 4 weeks ending 03/01/09.

Top_websites_receiving_traffic_from_UK_bollywwod_searches_2000_table.png

Of course, not all Bollywood-related search traffic goes to generalist sites, and the table above includes three Indian / British-Asian properties: ApunKaChoice.Com, Abhishek Bachchan and Chakpak. By creating a custom category of these and other similar sites, we were able to build up a demographic picture of the type of people looking for Bollywood info online. Bollywood websites are most popular with people aged between 18 and 34 (who account for almost three quarters of visitors) that live in London, the South East and the East.

The table below illustrates the Experian Mosaic lifestyle segmentation for our Bollywood custom category. No surprise to see Settled Minorities, Asian Enterprise and South Asian Industry at the top of the list, and combined they account for a quarter of all visitors. Elsewhere, the Mosaic types most likely to visit Bollywood websites come from two main Mosaic groups: Urban Intelligence (defined as: ‘Young, single and mostly well-educated, these people are cosmopolitan in tastes and liberal in attitudes’) and Welfare Borderline (‘People who are struggling to achieve rewards and are mostly reliant on the council for accommodation and benefits’).

Demographics_experian_mosaic_profile_bollywood_websites_UK_2008.png

As with our list of the top Polish websites in the UK last year, it is possible that we’ve missed some Bollywood stars of our list. If you spot any glaring errors, please suggest them in the comment box below, and I’ll recreate the list.

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* Searches for ‘imran khan’ will include both the former Pakistani cricketer and the Bollywood film star!