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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: BBC

Sherlock sets new record for BBC iPlayer

January 06, 2012

As always over the festive season there was a feast of TV delights to keep us entertained when speaking to family members grew tiresome. With so much choice over the Christmas period we were expecting Video on Demand (VOD) to... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by James Murray at 08:05 AM | (0)
In Categories BBC | Christmas | TV | Video

HPV searches spike during cervical cancer awareness month

February 09, 2011

January was cervical cancer awareness month and as a result searches for cervical cancer and related terms increased by 116% during the month. Although cervical cancer was not the most searched for type of cancer during January, the chart below... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 04:22 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories BBC | Charities | Health

2010 Online: the year in review

December 21, 2010

I can scarcely believe that a whole year has passed since I was sitting here writing the 2009 review, but 12 months to the day here we are, and it’s been another fascinating year in the digital world. Once again... Continue reading...

Snow dictates search behaviour to news, travel and retail sites

December 20, 2010

Online search behaviour was dictated this weekend by the snow. With the flakes falling thick and fast on Saturday there were huge spikes in traffic to news, weather, travel and social networking sites. With reports of up to five inches... Continue reading...

Chile Miner Rescue Coverage: The BBC vs Sky News

October 15, 2010

There was a spur of optimism to the news on Wednesday evening as the 33 miners in Chile who had been trapped for 69 days underground were finally rescued. The live broadcast of the event made the rescue all the... Continue reading...

1 in every 100 UK Internet searches Sky Sports related

August 16, 2010

Although the lower leagues had already kicked off earlier in the month, the football season truly got underway this weekend with the first Barclays Premier League matches. As you would expect, UK Internet visits to key football related websites increased... Continue reading...

Times paywall: initial data and analysis

June 24, 2010

Following months of speculation, News International has finally erected a paywall around the Times newspaper website. After a couple of weeks running two sites, (www.timesonline.co.uk and www.thetimes.co.uk) in parallel, visitors to the former site are now automatically redirected to the... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 12:23 PM | (11) | (2)
In Categories BBC | News and Media

Budget 2010: the online response

June 23, 2010

As expected, yesterday’s budget, presented by the Chancellor, George Osborne, gained a huge amount of press coverage. Given the wide range of changes introduced, it is not a surprise to see that many people went online to research both the... Continue reading...

LoveFilm: the 11th most visited online retailer in the UK

June 17, 2010

Yesterday BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs program You and Yours included an item on LoveFilm, the online DVD rental and movie streaming service. It included an interview with the company’s CEO Simon Calver, as well as myself talking about the... Continue reading...

Leadership debate winners: Lib Dems, Sky News, ITV and Twitter

April 19, 2010

Despite the best efforts of an Icelandic volcano to ground all Northern European flights and take (obscure?) the limelight, last week’s leaders’ debate grabbed a lot of media attention. The consensus view is that Nick Clegg came out on top,... Continue reading...

2010 Budget: the online response

March 25, 2010

Yesterday Alistair Darling unveiled the final Budget before the election and, as you would expect, it has come under significant scrutiny from the media, the City and voters themselves. For many people the Internet was the first place they went... Continue reading...

The dotcom bubble: 10 years on

March 10, 2010

Today is the tenth anniversary of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, so I though it would be interesting to see how the Internet landscape has changed over the last decade. Below is a list of the top 20 websites... Continue reading...

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... Continue reading...

Eastenders’ web traffic spikes following E20 launch

January 13, 2010

Last week Eastenders launched E20, an online spinoff named after the fictional Walford postcode in which the BBC’s flagship soap opera is set. Traffic to the Eastenders’ homepage (which includes the E20 microsite) spiked as a result, with the peak... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 12:44 PM | (0)
In Categories BBC | TV | Video

BBC Radio 1 website has its busiest ever day thanks to RATM vs. X Factor chart battle

December 21, 2009

Yesterday (20/12/09) was the busiest ever day for the BBC Radio 1 website as listeners logged on to discover that Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ had beaten X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s ‘The Climb’ to the Christmas... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 03:35 PM | (0)
In Categories BBC | Christmas | Music

X Factor receives four times more UK Internet visits than Strictly Come Dancing

November 16, 2009

The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing have become staples of the pre-Christmas television schedules. The ITV and BBC shows rely on the reality TV show format, but appeal to quite different audiences. While Strictly is most popular with older... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 02:15 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories BBC | TV

The importance of photo searches

September 29, 2009

Whilst looking through this week’s list of fast moving search terms, one term that caught my eye was ‘great north run photos’. As the chart below illustrates, searches for the term spiked last week (w/e 26/09/09) in line with the... Continue reading...

American visitors to UK news websites

September 18, 2009

I recently blogged about changing Internet usage habits in the UK, and specifically about the shift from transactional to content based websites. Within that mix, it is typically the growth of newer areas - such as social networks and video... Continue reading...

Microsoft Bing News Search

August 27, 2009

Amongst all of the excitement about Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, one element of the new service that hasn’t received a huge amount of coverage is its news search function. Bing News Search offers a similar service to Google News,... Continue reading...

Ashes success boosts BBC Sport, Sky Sports and cricket websites

August 24, 2009

UK Internet traffic to Cricket websites shot up over the weekend as England regained the Ashes from Australia. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet visits to our Cricket category reached their highest level for three years yesterday. Unfortunately I... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 11:15 AM | (1) | (0)
In Categories BBC | Demographics | Sport

Revision searches and BBC Bitesize

June 10, 2009

One of the fastest moving websites last week was BBC Schools, which experienced a 40% increase in traffic to become the 106th most visited website in the UK. However, as the chart below illustrates, last week’s spike wasn’t the first... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 09:50 AM | (2) | (0)
In Categories BBC | Education | Search

Top 100 student websites in the UK

June 02, 2009

Yesterday I received a call from Sridhar Venkatapuram of the London Business School asking me about the online behaviour of students in the UK. I mentioned on Twitter that I was pulling a list of the 100 most popular websites... Continue reading...

ITV.com traffic reaches record high thanks to Britain’s Got Talent

June 01, 2009

The Britain’s Got Talent final attracted 19.2 million viewers on Saturday night, making it the most watched non-sporting television programme since 2003. The ITV show, which was won by dance troupe Diversity rather than favourite Susan Boyle, picked up almost... Continue reading...

BBC F1 and the new England Kit

March 30, 2009

The Formula 1 season kicked off this weekend, with Jenson Button pulling off a surprise victory for the new Brawn team. This year the UK television coverage has returned to the BBC after more than a decade with ITV. In... Continue reading...

Online video traffic up 41%; BBC iPlayer 22nd most popular UK website

March 19, 2009

UK Internet traffic to Video websites has increased by 40.7% over the last 12 months. During February 2009, 1 in every 35 UK Internet visits went to a specialist Video website, up from 1 in every 50 in February 2008.... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (2)
In Categories BBC | Search | TV | Video

Apprenticeships and The Apprentice

March 13, 2009

UK Internet visits to the homepage of The Apprentice, the BBC TV show starring Sir Alan Sugar, have shot up over the last week. Some of this traffic is a result of anticipation for the forthcoming fifth series, but most... Continue reading...

Facebook the most searched for brand in the UK

March 05, 2009

Britain’s favourite social network and the second most visited website in the UK after Google, is also the most searched-for brand by UK Internet users. During the 12 weeks ending 3 January 2009, 1 in every 42 Internet searches in... Continue reading...

The Telegraph: how to pick up traffic from Digg

February 12, 2009

The Telegraph recently ran an excellent story that included our recent Twitter data. While reading the article I noticed the Digg widget illustrated in the picture below on the newspaper’s homepage. Launched last October it lists the most ‘dugg’ Telegraph... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (18) | (0)
In Categories BBC | News and Media | Social networks

Twitter traffic increases 10-fold in a year

January 21, 2009

Following Heather’s post yesterday on Twitter overtaking Digg in the US, here is some UK data on the most talked about website of the moment: UK Internet traffic to the site has increased 10-fold over past last 12 months. For... Continue reading...

John Sergeant and Strictly Come Dancing online

November 21, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, when we predicted that Diana Vickers will win X-Factor, I opened my blog post thus: ‘Now that we’ve got the American election and the Glenrothes by-election out of the way, we can finally direct our... Continue reading...

TV and US media websites big election winners in the UK

November 06, 2008

The US presidential election was a global media event, and Barack Obama’s historic victory caused a spike in traffic to news websites in the UK. Here is a list of the 10 most visited in the News and Media websites... Continue reading...

X Factor vs. Strictly Come Dancing 2008

October 30, 2008

The annual pre-Christmas battle for Saturday night tea time TV supremacy is well under way. In the red corner: ITV’s The X Factor, with Cheryl Cole replacing Sharon Osbourne on the judging panel. In the blue corner: the BBC’s Strictly... Continue reading...

The cult of Robert Peston and BBC blogs

October 07, 2008

Is Robert Peston - "the face of the credit crunch" - the hardest working man at the BBC? The corporation’s business editor starts his day at breakfast time on the Today Programme and doesn’t seem to finish until bed time... Continue reading...

The role of news aggregators in the UK

October 02, 2008

News aggregators come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from straight forward aggregators (e.g. Google News) to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious. When creating a custom category of the top sites in the UK we... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: Strictly Come Dancing, Pierrepoint, Most Haunted

September 01, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were: 1. strictly come dancing 2. us open 3. bournemouth air show 4. www.bebo.co.uk 5. most haunted live 6. albert pierrepoint 7. most haunted 8. you tube.com 9. euromillions... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: Olympics, BBC iPlayer, UCAS and fantasy football

August 18, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were: 1. ucas track 2. bbc olympics 3. fantasy premier league 4. dream team 5. michael phelps 6. tom daley 7. the sun dream team 8. joules 9. last... Continue reading...

9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded

August 14, 2008

We’ve just updated our data on navigational / branded search in the UK for our new research report, Managing Your Brand Online. During May 2008, 88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were branded in... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: Olympics, celebrities and exams

August 11, 2008

No prizes for guessing what event dominated the fast moving search term list in the UK last week. Here’s the top 10. 1. beijing 2008 olympic games 2. olympics 3. craig jones 4. morgan freeman 5. olympics 2008 6. bernie... Continue reading...

Knife crime searches: statistics, prevention and geography

July 24, 2008

At Hitwise we believe that our search data provides an unprecedented insight into what people are thinking. This information has a huge number of uses, from spotting the latest hot band to measuring the popularity of any number of products,... Continue reading...

Superbrands: demographics and lifestyle information

July 23, 2008

The Centre for Brand Analysis released its list of the top Superbrands in the UK earlier this week, with Google taking the top spot after placing third last year. By looking at the profile of visitors to their homepages, we... Continue reading...

Food websites grow as self-sufficiency gains popularity

July 18, 2008

Almost a year ago we investigated the seasonality of popular recipes. Recent analysis for 2008 reveals a similar pattern, with searches for cake recipes featuring heavily again this summer. However, it was interesting to note that visits to the Food... Continue reading...

Twitter UK traffic: up 485% this year, 70% higher than USA

July 16, 2008

The two Heathers (Hopkins and Dougherty) have both written about the growth of Twitter in the US recently, so here is some UK data on the micro-blogging service. As you can see from the chart below, the site’s growth has... Continue reading...

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.