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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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World Cup 2010 searches and Panini football stickers

June 01, 2010

The World Cup is nearly upon us and, as you would imagine, the Internet is starting to go mad for it. Last week (w/e 29/05/10) UK Internet users searched for nearly 25,000 terms; a few were related to other events, but the vast majority referred to the upcoming festival of football in South Africa. The ten most popular were:

1. world cup 2010 (4.98% of all UK Internet searches containing the phrase ‘world cup’)
2. world cup (3.70%)
3. world cup 2010 dates (3.28%)
4. england world cup fixtures (1.77%)
5. world cup fixtures (1.64%)
6. fifa world cup 2010 (1.36%)
7. world cup groups (1.10%)
8. world cup 2010 wall chart (1.10%)
9. fifa world cup (0.74%)
10. world cup fantasy football (0.73%)

It’s interesting to see how the volumes for the most popular terms have fluctuated over the last few weeks (as illustrated in the chart below). Searches for ‘world cup 2010 dates’ started to take off at the beginning of April, and have continued to increase ever since. The term ‘england world cup fixtures’ has followed a similar path, but ‘world cup 2010 wall chart’ only began to take off at the start of May as fans started to become more involved in the tournament. The increase in searches for ‘world cup odds’ is another sign of this involvement, although ‘world cup fantasy football’ dropped off a little bit last week. Squad-related searches fell over the last couple of weeks, but are likely to increase again this week following the announcement of the final 23 man squad today.

UK_world_cup_2010_searches_dates_fixtures_wall_chart_fantasy_football_odds_england_squad_panini_stickers.png

2,700 of the World Cup related searches last week contained the term ‘england’, while 6,900 included ‘2010’. However, the term that pleased me most last week was ‘panini world cup 2010’, the 38th most popular variation. It’s nice to see that in the era of iPads and games consoles, good old fashioned football stickers remain popular. Both Amazon UK and eBay UK have been paying for traffic from the term over the last few weeks, hoping to cash in on the appetite for swaps and shinies. But the biggest recipient of traffic from the term is the Panini homepage itself, which (as the chart below illustrates) has experienced record traffic levels over the last few weeks.

UK_Internet_visits_to_the_panini_world_Cup_football_stickers_homepage_chart_2010.png

I did have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it wasn’t kids collecting the stickers, but adults re-living their youth (imagine groups of men in their 20s and 30s congregating in offices and pubs whispering “got…got….got…got… got…NEED! NEED NEED!”). But that isn’t the case: as the chart below illustrates, the Experian Mosaic types that most over-index as visitors to the Panini homepage are those household containing families.

Demographics_of_panini_world_cup_2010_football_srickers_collectors_experian_mosaic.png