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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Celebrities

Twitter has biggest ever day of online traffic after super injunction revelations

May 10, 2011

Twitter had its highest ever peak in UK Internet visits yesterday (9 May 2011) due to the extraordinary revelations of the super injunction scandal, which exposed the identities of several high profile celebrities. Visits to Twitter increased by 14% on... Continue reading...

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In Categories Celebrities | Social networks | Twitter

Royal Wedding prompts cake search spike

April 20, 2011

With the Royal Wedding just nine days away, online searches have been turning very Wills and Kate centric in the UK. Of all the searches conducted by UK Internet users which contained the word ‘wedding’ over the last four weeks,... Continue reading...

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In Categories Celebrities | Charities | News and Media

Charity traffic leaps 30% in Comic Relief week

March 18, 2011

It’s red nose time and once again the UK turns its thoughts to sponsored runs, baking extravaganzas and taking baths in baked beans – all in the name of raising money for charity. As you might expect, searches for all... Continue reading...

Mafia rule on Sky Atlantic search terms

February 10, 2011

Whether it’s Steve Buscemi running the mob in Boardwalk Empire or Sean Bean looking suspiciously like Boromir in Game of Thrones, there has been a lot of buzz around Sky Atlantic, the new home of American TV channel HBO in... Continue reading...

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In Categories Celebrities | TV

Comedians have last laugh of ticketing search terms

January 24, 2011

Every week the research team here at Hitwise do some analysis of the ticketing industry to see which music artists are being searched for the most and which are the most popular gigs/festivals that people want to attend. Whilst this... Continue reading...

Golden Globes Glee as Lea Michele still tops searches

January 14, 2011

Awards season officially starts this Sunday when Hollywood’s A-listers hit the red carpet for the 68th Golden Globe Awards. In the last four weeks searches for terms related to the Golden Globes have increased 73% as anticipation rises ahead of... Continue reading...

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...

Digital Death provides boon of Life for kids charity

December 08, 2010

Running an effective social media campaign is no easy task for any company, but for a charity with limited marketing resources that challenge is especially difficult. Perhaps the greatest success to date of an excellent charitable social media campaign was... Continue reading...

Online cashing in on Will and Kate’s royal wedding engagement

November 17, 2010

The announcement of a royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton was barely hours old before the country started looking to cash in on the event yesterday. The media revealed that the wedding ring will be fashioned from Welsh... Continue reading...

Cheryl Cole most searched for celebrity online

October 28, 2010

Celebrities – from the A-list Hollywood star to the Z-list Big Brother housemate, we’re obsessed with them, and no-one seems to attract more public attention currently than the nation’s favourite Geordie, Cheryl Cole. We monitor over 50 million search terms... Continue reading...

Gamu Nhengu number one search topic driving traffic to Facebook

October 07, 2010

X-Factor controversy has been splashed all over the media this week ever since Cheryl Cole decided not to put through outstanding talent Gamu Nhengu. What first seemed like a talent contest fix then descended into accusations of racism and finally... Continue reading...

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In Categories Celebrities | Fast moving search terms | TV | Twitter

Kim Kardashian most popular celebrity using Twitter

September 30, 2010

Twitter has attracted some very high profile users in the last three years with Britney Spears, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross all big advocates of the micro-blogging platform. However, the most popular celebrity to use Twitter... Continue reading...

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In Categories Celebrities | Social networks | Twitter

Rio Ferdinand the most searched for footballer in the UK; Cristiano Ronaldo the most popular around the world

June 11, 2010

Last week 1 in every 155 search terms typed into a search engine in the UK were World Cup related. However, this number refers only to terms containing variations on the phrase ‘world cup’; there are obviously lots of other... 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...

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...

Joe to win X Factor - X Factor predictions update

December 11, 2009

Another guest post from Experian Hitwise Client Intelligence Analyst Richard Seymour updating our data from last weeks X Factor predictions Looking at the data from the week ending 5th December, after the Final 4 live show we can see that... Continue reading...

Who will win The X Factor 2009?

December 04, 2009

In this guest post, Experian Hitwise Client Intelligence Analyst Richard Seymour uses our data to try and predict who will win this year’s X Factor... We have a number of Hitwise tools and data sets that we can use to... Continue reading...

Record week for Google News

September 21, 2009

A while ago we highlighted how Google News UK picks up more traffic from searches for celebrities than any other type of news. Last week was a bumper week for celebrity news stories (unfortunately for sad reasons in many cases),... Continue reading...

Bee keeping and the Beehaus

August 10, 2009

Monday mornings are never the most cheerful time of the week, but mine are often brightened up by perusing our list of the previous week’s fast moving search terms. This morning the term that brought a smile to my face... 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...

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In Categories Blogs | Celebrities | Music | News and Media

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...

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...

Celeb and entertainment searches dominate Google News

March 26, 2009

Last week we revealed that Twitter had overtaken Google News in the UK. However, although everyone’s favourite micro-blogging service receives more UK Internet visits, Google News remains the greater source of traffic for News and Media websites. As the chart... Continue reading...

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...

“Money Saving Expert” Martin Lewis the most searched-for personality in the UK

February 18, 2009

Martin Lewis, creator of the “consumer revenge” website Money Saving Expert was the most searched-for personality by UK Internet users during the 12 weeks ending January 3 2009. There were 11% more searches for Martin Lewis than US President Barack... Continue reading...

Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai most searched for Bollywood stars

January 07, 2009

Last week UK Internet searches for a portfolio of 100+ Bollywood stars was 68% higher than a year ago. Here is a list of the top 20 most searched for actors and actresses from that portfolio over the 4 weeks... 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...

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...

Kerry Katona and YouTube

October 27, 2008

Following her much talked about appearance on ITV’s This Morning show last week, searches for ‘kerry katona’ have gone through the roof. One website that received a lot of traffic from searches for the former Atomic Kitten singer was YouTube.... Continue reading...

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.