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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Demographics

Are you attracting the right type of Facebook fans?

September 13, 2011

Back in June I wrote a blog highlighting our research showing that each new Facebook fan generates on average 20 additional visits to a retailer’s website. However, as every retailer knows, not all website visits are equal. Most eCommerce sites... Continue reading...

1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website

June 23, 2011

We’ve been talking at Hitwise for a very long time about the benefits of social media and how Facebook in particular is becoming critical to the success of multi-channel marketing. We are constantly asked: “What’s the ROI with advertising on... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 08:40 AM | (7) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Facebook | Social networks

How search is the ideal benchmark for consumer behaviour

June 15, 2011

On Monday the Bank of England (BoE) released its latest Quarterly Bulletin which included an article Using search data as economic indicators. The central bank is using search data to benchmark key areas like housing, unemployment, tax and benefits. Here... Continue reading...

Online population vote YES to AV

May 05, 2011

Today (Thursday 5 May) polling stations have opened across the UK to decide whether to change the electoral system from first-past-the-post (FPTP) to the alternative vote (AV) system, under which voters rank candidates in order of preference. The majority of... Continue reading...

The changing facets of social shopping online

April 07, 2011

We had quite a few comments on my post last month about Groupon UK and the rise of social shopping. Given the interest surrounding this topic, I thought I’d follow up with a post which concentrates on the key differences... Continue reading...

Psychic Sally foresees new online audience for Ents24

March 22, 2011

Ticketing is one of the most dynamic categories we monitor online as every week there are always new trends of search terms as the UK Internet population seek information about upcoming gigs, festivals, musicals and comedy acts. I’ve written previous... Continue reading...

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In Categories Demographics | Fast moving search terms

Morrisons can learn online lessons from Kiddicare

February 16, 2011

Yesterday supermarket chain Morrisons announced that it had bought baby products group Kiddicare for £70 million. The acquisition is an exciting development for Morrisons who can leverage Kiddicare’s digital platform to increase online sales and market presence. Currently Morrisons is... Continue reading...

Super Bowl bigger than Six Nations in the UK

February 15, 2011

In the last few weeks there has been a glut of exciting sport, with Andy Murray reaching the final of the Australian Open, a record goal scoring weekend in the football Premier League, the start of the Six Nations rugby... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 04:23 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Mosaic lifestyle | Sport

Hitwise reveals Middle Britain online

December 15, 2010

Earlier this week Experian revealed the real Middle Britain to bring sharp classification to what has previously been an overused and woolly term. Using Experian’s consumer segmentation tool Mosaic, some 13.1 million people were identified as Middle Britain in the... Continue reading...

UK’s most affluent groups more likely to search for travel insurance than car insurance

November 08, 2010

One of the amazing assets of our data is the breadth and depth of information we can use to provide greater insight into online trends. Often when I’m writing these blog posts I’ll be describing what search terms people are... Continue reading...

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In Categories Demographics | Insurance | Mosaic lifestyle

Yeo Valley rap advert attracts brand new online audience

October 20, 2010

Organic milk and yoghurt producers Yeo Valley were certainly “keeping it country” as they unveiled their new advertising campaign – the Yeo Valley rap. The advert first aired during one of the commercial breaks of the X-Factor on Saturday 9... Continue reading...

Canterbury top digital city in the UK

October 01, 2010

The Internet has become an integral part of a lot of people’s lives in the UK. Certain cities are particularly digitally integrated however, and surprisingly, London is not the online hub of the UK. In our analysis of Internet usage... 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...

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...

Flag searches reflect the patriotic mood

June 03, 2010

You can’t have failed to notice the number of flags flying in the UK over the last few weeks. Many of those hanging from cars, pubs and windows across the land are England flags, but other nations are represented as... Continue reading...

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,... Continue reading...

Apple the most searched for consumer electronics brand as iPad launches in the UK

May 28, 2010

Apple’s iPad finally goes on sale in the UK today, supported by an advertising campaign and the usual smattering of media coverage. UK Internet searches for the device have been increasing in anticipation of the UK release; for the week... Continue reading...

Selfridges: the impact of a transactional website

May 21, 2010

One of the websites that fared well in my analysis of the online luxury market was Selfridges. The famous department store’s homepage has recently gone transactional, and this has had a positive impact on its retail ranking in the UK.... Continue reading...

Election traffic: Tories gain at Lib Dems’ expense, but it remains close online

May 04, 2010

The general election is just two days away, and it remains close. The chart below illustrates the weekly market share of visits to the three main political parties’ homepages, with the Conservative regaining the top spot. The Liberal Democrats have... Continue reading...

Will Motorway Man swing to the Lib Dems?

April 21, 2010

Earlier in the week I highlighted the impact of the ‘Clegg Effect’ on traffic to the Liberal Democrats' website, and this has also been reflected in the most recent polls. However, the first past the post electoral system that we... Continue reading...

Online voter registration

April 13, 2010

British citizens flocked to the Internet to register to vote last week following the announcement that the General Election will take place on May 6th. UK Internet searches for the term ‘register to vote’ increased 9-fold between the week ending... Continue reading...

Moshi Monsters

March 25, 2010

A couple of days ago we provided some data for this Evening Standard article about the success of Moshi Monsters, the fast growing children’s / games website. Traffic to the site has increased more than five-fold over the last 12... Continue reading...

Coffee wars: Flat White vs. Cappuccino

March 11, 2010

Hitwise was started in Australia, and there remains a strong Antipodean influence in our London office. The most recent manifestation of this is a fashion amongst my colleagues for flat whites – a style of coffee that, like the pavlova... Continue reading...

Chatroulette: a posh webcam?

February 15, 2010

This morning I stumbled upon an article in Guardian profiling Chatroulette, a new webcam site that, as its name implies, connects users with random strangers for live video chats. According to the article, the site “is proving a sensation around... Continue reading...

Top websites in France

February 09, 2010

Bonjour! It’s a very exciting day at Experian Hitwise towers today because we have announced the launch of Hitwise France! The Hitwise France service will provide clients with data on website industry and category rankings, Clickstream traffic activity, search behaviour... 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...

UK Internet visits to skiing and snowboarding websites up 18.5% year on year

January 22, 2010

The recent heavy snow and cold weather may have caused travel chaos in some parts of the UK, but it clearly has also served to remind people of the pleasures of winter sports. For the week ending 9th January 2010,... Continue reading...

The profile of online shoppers becomes more affluent over the Christmas period

January 19, 2010

One of the things we discovered when helping to develop the new Experian Mosaic UK 2009 profiles was that the typical online shopper tends to come from a middle or lower middle income group. However, over the Christmas period, the... Continue reading...

Snow causes traffic to Weather and Transport websites to reach all time high

January 15, 2010

UK Internet visits to both Transport and Weather websites reached an all time high last week as British people flocked online to keep up to date with the latest snow developments. For the week ending January 9th 2010, Weather websites... Continue reading...

Beautiful People experiences fifty-fold increase in traffic following "fatties" announcement

January 05, 2010

The dating and social networking website Beautifulpeople.com which describes itself as “an exclusively beautiful community”, stirred up a bit of controversy yesterday when it announced the axing some 5,000 members following complaints that they had gained weight. "As a business,... 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...

Online Christmas shopping: top towns

December 17, 2009

The last four weeks have been the busiest of the year for online retailers, and this presents a good opportunity showcase our new UK Postal Areas data. This allows us to segment website and category visits by UK Postal Area... 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...

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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 11:50 AM | (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...

Tweet 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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (11) | (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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 11:30 AM | (1)
In Categories Demographics | Education | Mosaic lifestyle | Science

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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 08:21 AM | (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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 08:00 AM | (12) | (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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM | (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.