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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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MPs' expenses searches drive Telegraph page views
May 14, 2009
The Telegraph’s MPs' expenses story has dominated the headlines for almost a week now. As the chart below illustrates, searches for a portfolio of terms relating to story increased by 575% last week, and our data will likely show a further increase next week.
The portfolio of 100+ terms was dominated by generic phrases, which accounted for around half of all searches. However, further down the list (top 10 illustrated below) there were searches for specific MPs, as well as a mention for the Telegraph. Gordon Brown and Barbara Follett were the most searched for MPs last week, but it will be interesting to see who else makes it to the top 10 this week given the raft of new claims exposed by the Telegraph since last Saturday. We promise to publish an updated list when we get the data next week.
1. mps expenses (21.7% of all searches) for terms in the MPs’ Expenses portfolio)
2. mp expenses (14.4%)
3. mp’s expenses (5.2%)
4. mp expenses list (4.3%)
5. mps expenses list (2.6%)
6. gordon brown expenses (2.1%)
7. barbara follett expenses (1.9%)
8. telegraph expenses (1.7%)
9. ministers expenses (1.7%)
10. mps’ expenses (1.65)
So what impact has the story has on the Telegraph’s traffic? Last week the paper was the main recipient of traffic from UK Internet searches for terms in our MPs’ Expenses portfolio, picking 31.2% of all clicks – all of them organic. Google News UK was the next biggest recipient, followed by political site They Work For You. The rest of the top 10 was dominated competitor media sites, including BBC News, Guardian Unlimited, Metro, Sky News and the Daily Mail.
As the chart below illustrates, the Telegraph’s market share of UK Internet visits to sites in our News and Media – Print category shot up when it broke the story on May 8th. It has since declined, but remained above its typical level.
However, although the Telegraph’s visits haven’t increased as much as I expected, the site’s average session time has increased from 8 to 9 minutes. As the chart below illustrates, that is the highest level this year. Clearly, visitors are spending longer than usual on Telegraph’s site in order to view the expenses content. As a result, the site’s page views have increased at an even greater than visit numbers since the story broke.
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:30 AM
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In Categories Fast moving search terms | News and Media | Politics | Search
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Enjoyed your article.
Was not sure if I was the only person who is studying whether or not the plural of a keyword will alter, effect or make not a scrap of difference to a clients ROI!
Posted by Ben Sykes | May 14, 2009 10:10 AM