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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Healthy New Year? Gym traffic up, diet searches down

January 05, 2009

Happy New Year! Many readers - including the lucky ones who got a Wii Fit for Christmas - will be hoping for a healthy new year, and they’re not alone. It’s the time for New Year’s Resolutions, and getting fit will be at the top of many people’s lists as the sign up for the gym. Traffic to gym websites traditionally spikes after Christmas, and this year the increase has been even greater than usual. As the chart below illustrates, last week traffic to a custom category gym and health club websites was up 14% on the equivalent week last year.

UK_Internet_traffic_to_gym_websites_christmas_new_year_2008_2007_chart.png

However, although traffic to gym websites is increasing, the opposite is true of diet searches. As the chart below illustrates, searches for the term ‘diet’ are down 20% on last year, while for searches for ‘diets’ have fallen by 50%. The breadth of the term ‘diet’ – i.e. the number of search terms containing the word ‘diet’, rather than just searches for the individual term itself – has also fallen, by 8.5% since last year. On the other hand, the breadth of searches for ‘detox’ has increase by 1% over the same period, although searches for the basic term have decreased by 12.5%.

UK_internet_diet_diets_detox_searches_new_year_christmas_2008_2007_chart.png

Of course, although diet searches may be down year on year, there has still been a noticeable post Christmas spike. Here are the 10 most searched for diet plans in the UK last week:

1. Cambridge Diet
2. Atkins Diet
3. Special K Diet
4. Detox Diet
5. Cabbage Soup Diet
6. GI Diet
7. South Beach Diet
8. Tesco Diet
9. Gluten Free Diet
10. Diabetic Diet

Other popular diet-related searches included ‘diet pills’, ‘free diet plans’, and ‘balanced diet’. Aside from variations on the term ‘detox diet’, the most popular detox-related searches include ‘3 day detox’, ‘liver detox’ and ‘dr dre detox’. In case you were wondering, the latter term relates to the rapper / producer’s long awaited forthcoming album - not his very own detox plan!

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