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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Blogs

2009 online: the year in review

December 21, 2009

The end of the year presents and excellent opportunity for reflection, and also for lists. Combining the two, I’ve decided to reflect on the last year of online activity in the UK by providing a list of our most popular... Continue reading...

Content driven websites receive 73% more traffic than transactional ones

August 13, 2009

The chart on this slide illustrates the percentage of all UK Internet visits accounted for by the largest and most significant online categories – and how this situation has changed over the last three years. As you can see, there... Continue reading...

Michael Jackson, Twitter and TMZ

June 26, 2009

Following the tragic death of Michael Jackson last night, UK Internet visits to his homepage increased 17 fold. Yesterday www.michaeljackson.com was the 9th most visited Music website in the UK, and the highest ranked artist homepage. TMZ, the website that... Continue reading...

Iran searches and Twitter

June 23, 2009

Given the current political situation in the country, we were expecting to see a spike in searches for ‘iran’ last week. As the chart below illustrates, there were more searches for Iran during the week ending 20/06/09 than for Iraq,... Continue reading...

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...

What would a Google-Twitter marriage mean?

April 06, 2009

Last week it was reported that Google is in talks to purchase Twitter. Therefore, now seems like a good time to revisit some of the stats, starting with the top level traffic figures. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet... Continue reading...

Daniel Hannan: has social media finally gone political in the UK?

March 31, 2009

It is generally accepted that his campaign team’s use of social media contributed to Barack Obama’s victory in last year’s American presidential election. But over on this side of the pond, politicians have been much slower to grasp the nettle... Continue reading...

Twitter and UK newspaper websites

March 16, 2009

Last week (w/e 14/03/09) Twitter.com was the 54th most visited website in the UK, up from 66th the week before. One consequence of Twitter rapid rise up the rankings is that the micro-blogging service has now overtaken most of the... Continue reading...

Twitter enters top 100 sites; UK traffic has trebled already in 2009

February 10, 2009

Last week (w/e 07/02/09) Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st within All Categories, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 11:30 AM | (10) | (4)
In Categories Blogs | Social networks | Twitter

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...

TVs, Computers and iPods most popular sales items

December 31, 2008

The table below lists the 10 most searched for consumer electronics products last week (which included the key sales days of Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and the week before. Searches for televisions increased by 148% last week, making the... Continue reading...

Pre-budget report: tax cuts and petrol prices

November 26, 2008

Given the economic conditions and the various rumours last week, the government’s pre-budget report has received a lot of attention online .Looking at the search data up to last week, you can see from the chart below that searches for... 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...

Top bands / artists: Katy Perry and Kate Nash

September 05, 2008

Here are the top band / artist searches sending traffic to social networks and music blogs during August. Starting with the social networks, Katy Perry, who topped the British and American charts over the summer with her hit “I Kissed... Continue reading...

Top bands / artists online: August 2008 chart

August 07, 2008

Here are this month’s lists of the top 20 band / artist searches sending traffic to social networking sites (e.g. MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, etc.) and the most popular music blogs for the 4 weeks ending August 2nd. First up social... 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...

Hottest bands on the social networks and music blogs

July 10, 2008

A few months ago we posted a list of the top 10 band / artist searches sending traffic to MySpace, the primary destination of searches for new artists. We’ve decided to expand the list to cover our whole Social Networking... Continue reading...

Blog traffic reaches all time high

June 10, 2008

UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all time high last week. As the chart below illustrates, Blogs and Personal Websites accounted for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits. Taking the slightly longer... Continue reading...

iPhone website reaches a new high as rumour mill goes into overdrive

June 09, 2008

Apple is expected to launch a new version of its iPhone at the Apple World Wide Developers' Conference in San Francisco this afternoon (UK time). As with all such events, the speculation amongst Apple fans and foes has almost reached... Continue reading...

Lolcats and popbitches

May 21, 2008

It’s hard to believe, but this is my 100th posting on this blog. So to celebrate I thought I’d write about something very important: lolcats. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a lolcat is a (usually cute) picture... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 08:00 AM | (8) | (0)
In Categories Blogs | Demographics | Humour

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.