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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Financial Services

Motor and car insurance search behaviour

October 27, 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 carried out for our recent UK Insurance webinar. The chart below illustrates searches for portfolios containing... 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...

Mortgages: Deposits and Fixed Rates

July 29, 2009

With Robin enjoying the thrills of being a new father, he has left the blog-reigns to me, Richard Seymour - Client Intelligence Analyst at Hitwise UK, for a couple of weeks. I’ve recently experienced a ‘life-event’ of my own by... Continue reading...

The role of paid search and comparison sites in the insurance sector

July 14, 2009

The insurance industry relies on paid search traffic more than most other online sectors. During June 2009, 33.0% of all the UK Internet traffic that insurance websites received from search engines came via paid clicks. That paid search rate is... Continue reading...

Budget 2009: paid search tactics

April 27, 2009

As you would expect, last week’s budget received a lot of press attention. UK Internet searches for the term ‘budget’ increased 27-fold between the weeks ending April 18th and 25th. However, as the chart below illustrates, searches for the term... Continue reading...

Interest rates: the relationship between online and offline behaviour

April 15, 2009

The Internet is now a key source of info for the majority of people in the UK. Consequently, search engines are one of the first places people turn to for information on everything from celebrity culture to the global financial... 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...

Exchange rates, currency sites and the strong Dollar

November 12, 2008

Following our post on the interest rate cut earlier in the week, we’ve been looking at the impact of exchange rates on UK Internet behaviour. For the last few years, people travelling to the US from the UK (and the... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 09:00 AM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Economy | Financial Services | Travel

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...

Irish banks benefit as UK online banking traffic reaches an all time high

October 06, 2008

The financial turbulence of the last couple of weeks has resulted in a surge in traffic to online banking sites. UK Internet traffic to websites in our Banks and Financial Institutions category increased by 9.2% last week, reaching an all... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 05:00 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Economy | Financial Services | Search

Credit crunch dominates fast moving search terms

September 22, 2008

Last week’s fastest moving search terms were: 1. ryder cup 2. hbos 3. northern rock 4. hbos share price 5. moto gp 6. share prices 7. aig 8. ftse 9. ftse 100 10. bloomberg As you would expect, the list... Continue reading...

Paid search rates by industry

September 09, 2008

We launched our New Search Intelligence tool in the UK today and, amongst other enhancements, it includes additional paid / organic search data. One great new feature allows you to measure paid search rates by industry, so I thought I’d... 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...

Branded borrowing on the increase

July 11, 2008

Searches for key borrowing related terms such as ‘mortgages’, ‘credit cards’, and ‘loans’ are in decline thanks to the credit crunch. They haven’t dried up completely, but the shrinking of the pie means that search marketers need to be even... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 08:00 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Branding | Financial Services | Search

How to save money in a recession

July 09, 2008

Earlier this week I was talking with Bruno Rost, a colleague from Experian Integrated Marketing who was looking for interesting Hitwise data that he could use in a BBC TV interview discussing the effects of the economic downturn on peoples'... Continue reading...

22% increase in paid brand search rates following Google’s trademark changes

June 19, 2008

The top online brands in the UK have significantly increased their rate of paid brand search following the recent changes to Google’s trademark policy on May 5th. Before Google’s changes took effect (4 weeks ending 12/04/2008), 9.2% of the search... Continue reading...

Mortgage calculators up, 100% mortgages down

June 16, 2008

When Abbey last month became the last big bank to abandon 100 per cent mortgages, it did so in the face of the credit crunch and falling demand from buyers. As the graph below shows, the volume of UK internet... Continue reading...

UK house prices: searches and sales

June 02, 2008

Heather Hopkins recently identified a correlation between house searches and house sales in the US. She compared searches for the term "homes for sale" with actual sales data from the American National Association of Realtors, and found that there was... Continue reading...

How long does it take to recover from a Google ‘blacklisting’? (GoCompare update)

April 16, 2008

A couple of months ago we highlighted the fate of GoCompare, the insurance comparison site that was ‘blacklisted’ by Google after the search engine discovered irregular linking activity. Just to recap: for the first few weeks of 2008, ‘car insurance’... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (8) | (0)
In Categories Financial Services | Google | Search

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...

What happens if your site gets 'blacklisted' by Google?

February 13, 2008

What is the impact on a website of being ‘blacklisted’ by Google? Recently the insurance comparison website GoCompare.com faced precisely this dilemma after the search engine picked up on irregular inbound links to its site, causing it to plummet down... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 02:30 PM | (22) | (6)
In Categories Financial Services | Search

Yahoo! and Microsoft: UK perspective

February 05, 2008

Following on from Bill’s and Heather’s posts, I wanted to share some UK data on the proposed Yahoo! and Microsoft deal. First up: webmail services, and as the chart below illustrates, Microsoft has a dominant market share with its Hotmail... Continue reading...

Paypal vs. Google Checkout in the UK

December 19, 2007

Last week my colleague Heather Dougherty posted about the success of alternative payment providers in the US this Christmas. While Bill Me Later hasn’t yet launched in the UK, the other two major players - Google Checkout and Paypal -... Continue reading...

Child benefit chaos, football failure

November 22, 2007

Yesterday we left work wishing for two things: an English football victory; and that today would provide us with some interesting data about the impact of the Revenue and Customs child benefit crisis on the government and banking sectors. By... Continue reading...

Property search terms

September 17, 2007

We’ll be presenting a property webinar tomorrow that will expand on our recent analysis of searches for overseas properties. Today I wanted to share some additional property-related findings to whet your appetite for the webinar. The table below illustrates the... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 01:40 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Financial Services | Property | Search

Cheap vs. Free

September 13, 2007

This week's Guardian Siteseeing column was inspired by Sandra's and Bill's recent posts on search value determinants. The main similarity between search behaviours in the UK and the other regions is the use of 'cheap' to search for travel and... Continue reading...

HSBC, Cadbury's and Facebook

September 05, 2007

There are many differing opinions as to the impact – positive or negative – of social networks on other sites, and a couple of recent examples provide some insight from either side of the fence. One positive side there was... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 01:20 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Financial Services | Food | Social networks

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.