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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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UK Internet Map (as featured on the BBC’s Virtual Revolution)

February 02, 2010

If you managed to catch the first episode of the BBC’s excellent Internet documentary, Virtual Revolution, on Saturday night you may have noticed occasional flashes of “Source: Experian Hitwise” at the bottom of your screen. In amongst interviews with such luminaries as Tim Berners Lee, Jimmy Wales and Bill Gates, the Beeb built a couple of funky graphics using our data. The first, at the start of the show, was an Internet map of the UK drawing on our postal data to highlight the top towns for activities such as social networking, blogging and online dating.

The second, towards the end of the programme, was a fantastic 3D visualisation of one our Network Maps. Below, in a somewhat rawer form, is our original, which is based on data from September last year. It illustrates how traffic flows between 30 of the top websites in the UK: the size of the bubble represents the website’s share of Internet visits (so Facebook and Google UK have the biggest bubbles), while the lines illustrate the amount of traffic moving between the sites (using our clickstream data).

The point made in the program is that the web has consolidated around a relatively small number of brands, and to a certain extent this is true (the top 100 sites currently account for 42.5% of all UK Internet visits), but I think the most interesting thing about these maps is the way the traffic flows between the sites. You can see, for example, how Microsoft and Yahoo! send their own properties a lot of traffic, and also how much traffic flows between the very biggest sites. It is also interesting to note how people regularly switch between social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

To see the BBC graphics department’s far superior rendering of this data, you can watch Virtual Revolution on iPlayer. I would suggest watching the whole thing, but if you’re feeling impatient it appears within the last 15 minutes of the program.

For further updates, you can follow both Hitwise UK and BBC Virtual Revolution on Twitter.

Comments

The 'map of internet visits' is a fantastic representation.

It's too good to let it slip away. I'd like access to this all the time. If you had a regular update I'd subscribe.

I don't know what to suggest except don't drop it! I'd at least like a high res' copy of this one !!

You could even have a flash version on your homepage...it is the ultimate statistical representation of the digital revolution...

Give yourself a pat on the back whoever put it together!!

Thanks
Jeremy.T
Jersey

Posted by Jeremy | February 3, 2010 11:34 AM

Managed to catch this show on iPlayer. The maps and visualisations were fantastic. Really drove home the data.

Wonder if they could slip into the next version of Hitwise? These would be very powerful tools to use during presentations etc.

Posted by Nick | February 3, 2010 09:31 PM

Nice chart! Loved the BBC version! Any chance of a higher resolution version of this chart! Even poster size!!

Posted by Andy Burton | February 8, 2010 12:42 AM

Likewise - if you can keep this available in a form that we can use in presentations etc that would be fantastic. Even better if you can persuade the Beeb to make their version available.
Copyright branded, of course, for your marketing purposes.

Regards
Bruce Bird
http://brucebird.com

Posted by Bruce Bird | February 15, 2010 10:52 AM