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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Demographics

How do people search for travel in the UK?

October 07, 2009

Today we present another guest post from Richard Seymour, Experian Hitwise Client Intelligence Analyst. The data is based on the excellent research that he and Iain Congdon, another Experian Hitwise analyst in the UK, carried out for our recent Global... Continue reading...

50%+ increases in US and Australian Internet searches for flights to the UK

September 30, 2009

Both American and Australian Internet searches for flights to the UK have increased by more than 50% over the last 12 months. Between August 2008 and August 2009 the volume of Internet searches for a portfolio of search terms relating... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 11:50 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Search | Travel

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...

Car scrappage scheme online

August 25, 2009

The government’s car scrappage scheme has been live for a few months now, and the consensus from the industry seems to be that it is starting to have an impact on new car sales. Looking at our search data, the... 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...

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

Friendfeed, Facebook and Twitter

August 11, 2009

Following today’s announcement that Facebook has purchased Friendfeed, I thought a few UK stats on the latter might be of interest. As the chart below illustrates, Friendfeed is a fast growing site, and its traffic has increased by 180% over... 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...

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...

UK traffic to Polish websites declining

May 28, 2009

Last year we highlighted the massive growth in UK Internet traffic to Polish websites, noting how the increase in visits to a custom category local and expat sites reflected the growth of the Polish immigrant population in the UK. Things... Continue reading...

London Marathon: 2010 searches overtake 2009

May 07, 2009

As you would expect, UK Internet traffic to the official London Marathon website spiked last week and was up 25% on the previous year. Searches for the race also increased, but I was surprised to see both ‘london marathon 2009’... 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...

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...

Guest post – ‘Click’ review by David Soskin

March 02, 2009

Following the example of my US colleagues, today I’m posting our first ever guest posting on the UK blog. I’d like to introduce David Soskin, Vice Chairman of Cheapflights, loyal Hitwise client for a number of years, and well respected... Continue reading...

Searches for e-books double

February 02, 2009

Over the last year UK interest in e-books has grown significantly, with searches for ‘ebooks’ doubling between January 2008 and 2009. There are four main e-book readers currently available: the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Borders iLiad, and the... Continue reading...

Social networks overtake adult websites

January 26, 2009

Last week we provided the BBC with some interesting data illustrating how UK Internet visits to Social Networks and Forums have overtaken Adult websites. As the chart below illustrates, social networks overtook last October and have remained ahead since. The... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (10) | (4)
In Categories Adult | Demographics | 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...

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...

Property websites and the online house price crash

December 17, 2008

In September we revealed that online House and Garden retailers had overtaken Property websites in terms of UK Internet visits. As you would expect, in the three months since that blog post, the situation has only got worse for online... Continue reading...

High street retailers’ online demographics

December 11, 2008

High street retailers received 22% more UK Internet visits than online only retailers in November, and the gap is likely to widen during December. The chart below illustrates UK Internet visits to our two custom categories of high street and... 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...

Unemployment, redundancy and Christmas jobs

November 17, 2008

The economic situation has worsened since our post on ‘redundancy’ searches in June, and unfortunately this is having a negative impact on job security. Consequently UK Internet searches for ‘redundancy’ have increased by 83% since August, reaching their highest peak... Continue reading...

Interest rate cut: impact on search behaviour

November 10, 2008

Following last week’s shock 1.5% rate cut by the Bank of England, UK Internet searches for ‘interest rates’ reached a three year high. As the chart below illustrates, this also led to a spike in searches for ‘tracker mortgages’ and... Continue reading...

Diana Vickers leading the X Factor pack online

November 07, 2008

Now that we’ve got the American election and the Glenrothes by-election out of the way, we can finally direct our attention to more important voting matters. Last week we showed how ITV’s The X Factor was picking up more online... Continue reading...

Online retail declines as Westfield opens

November 03, 2008

The economic downturn is beginning to have an impact on Internet retail in the UK. Monthly traffic to online retailers fell by 0.5% between October 2007 and 2008, while actual visits to the high street and shopping centers, as reported... 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...

Economic downturn benefits budget travel and cruises

October 29, 2008

UK Internet traffic to travel websites fell by 4.6% between September 2007 and September 2008, but certain sectors are thriving despite, or in some cases because of, the squeeze on household budgets. UK Internet visits to a Hitwise custom category... Continue reading...

Charity websites weather the credit crunch

October 15, 2008

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year the subject is poverty. Alan has already written an excellent post about the online charity landscape in Australia, so I thought that I would do the same for the UK. The most... Continue reading...

Large Hadron Collider fever online!

September 10, 2008

I’m writing this at 10:30am, so it seems like Earth probably hasn’t been sucked into a black hole (at least not yet). The ‘big bang’ experiment, which aims to recreate in miniature the creation of the Universe, has successfully started... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: Google Chrome, cautious investors, football and flooding

September 08, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were: 1. google chrome 2. man city 3. bestival 4. environment agency 5. chrome 6. manchester city 7. burghley horse trials 8. nsandi 9. ns&i 10. setanta sports The... 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...

Facebook overtakes eBay to become third most visited website

August 05, 2008

Facebook became the third most visited website in the UK during July, overtaking eBay UK on the way. As the chart below illustrates, the social network received 2.75% of all UK Internet visits last month, equivalent to one in every... Continue reading...

The changing profile of online newspaper readership

August 01, 2008

Using Hitwise data in combination with Experian’s Mosaic lifestyle information enables us to build a rich user profile of a given website or industry. Mosaic is a household-based segmentation system that classifies all UK households and neighborhoods into 61 unique... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 08:21 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Mosaic lifestyle | News and Media

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...

Asos.com: growth and demographics

July 02, 2008

Internet clothing retailer Asos.com seems to have shrugged off the economic downturn by yesterday announcing that it had doubled sales over the last 3 months. Following our analysis of the rapidly growing UK online fashion market last week, this didn’t... Continue reading...

Redundancy searches: employee and employer behaviour

June 26, 2008

Recently we’ve looked at how internet behaviour has adapted a number of ways to meet the challenges of an economic downturn, including consumer spending, inflation and house prices. However, until now we haven’t touched on the most worrying aspect: unemployment.... Continue reading...

Euro 2008 and British Football fans

June 11, 2008

Most of the rest of Europe is in the grip or football fever, but how excited is the UK considering that none of the home nations are taking part? ‘euro 2008’ was the most popular search term sending traffic to... Continue reading...

Petrol prices searches reach an all time high

May 28, 2008

UK Internet searches for ‘petrol prices’ reached an all time high last week in advance of yesterday’s fuel protests in London and Wales. As the chart below illustrates, searches for the term have been increasing since Christmas, and have shot... Continue reading...

Social networking and online shopping bigger in rural areas

May 22, 2008

This morning I noticed this article from the BBC highlighting a new Ofcom report which concluded that UK broadband penetration is higher in rural than urban areas. Or, as The Register put it, “Broadband bumpkins overtake city surfers”. Originally hailing... 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 | (5) | (0)
In Categories Blogs | Demographics | Humour

Freesat proves popular online

May 14, 2008

The launch of Freesat, the free satellite TV service provided by the BBC and ITV in the UK, proved popular with online consumers during its launch week. UK Internet traffic to www.freesat.co.uk, the service’s online homepage, increased by 627% between... Continue reading...

London Mayoral elections: what does the Internet data say?

April 22, 2008

A lot has been made about how the candidates and voters for the London Mayoral elections on May 1st have embraced the Internet like never before - at least in British political terms, as this is one area where the... Continue reading...

Google Book Search on the rise

April 15, 2008

Recently, Google announced that it has released an API which enables websites to link to the books within its Google Book Search functionality. This allows users to preview the book in question in a similar way to the ‘search inside’... Continue reading...

Eduardo injury and YouTube

February 26, 2008

The horrific injury sustained by Arsenal’s Brazilian-born Croatian striker Eduardo da Silva has led to an outpouring of sympathy from football fans, and not just supporters of Arsenal or Croatia. Searches for ‘eduardo’ increased almost forty-fold last week, and ‘eduardo... Continue reading...

UK Polish Internet usage on the rise

February 20, 2008

Estimates as to the number of Polish people in the UK range from half a million to over a million. Mass immigration from Central and Eastern Europe has led to a rush for the ‘Polish Pound’, with everyone from multinational... Continue reading...

LinkedIn demographics: an up-market social network and an up-market job site

January 25, 2008

In yesterday’s post I referred to LinkedIn as part social network, part jobs site. Facebook is the fifth largest site in its upstream clickstream, and last year Sandra wrote about the connections between the two websites. However, LinkedIn has a... Continue reading...

The demographics of gadgets

December 12, 2007

We came across this interesting claim from John Lewis that it expects to sell more electrical goods to women than men for the first time this Christmas. In order to test their prediction, I looked at the demographics of our... Continue reading...

Alesha Dixon to win Strictly Come Dancing?

December 07, 2007

A couple of weeks ago we posted about the rivalry between the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s The X-Factor, including a promise to make some predictions as to who would win the shows based our search data. Well, Strictly... Continue reading...

Campbell's age did have an impact on the Lib Dems

October 16, 2007

Unfortunately it seems that the polls, the party, and the public are indeed merciless, and last night Sir Menzies Campbell stood down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Yesterday there was a seven-fold increase in traffic to the Lib Dem’s... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Politics

Radiohead, Freakonomics and free music

October 10, 2007

Radiohead grabbed headlines last week by announcing that fans will be allowed to name their own price when downloading the band’s new album, In / Rainbows. The band is currently taking pre-orders via their official website, which saw an 11-fold... Continue reading...

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.