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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
Analyst Weblog
Category Archives: Food
UK Halloween and fancy dress costume searches increasing
November 02, 2009
Judging by the amount of merchandise for sale in the shops, it feels like Halloween becomes more popular every year in the UK. And Hitwise search data seems to bear this out: the chart below illustrates the breadth of searches... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:58 AM
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In Categories Adult | Fashion | Fast moving search terms | Food | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Nescafe reward scheme and advertising campaign
September 24, 2009
One industry that has struggled to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the Internet is Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). This is partly because it generally doesn’t sell goods directly to consumers, but also a consequence of their... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
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In Categories Branding | Food | Search
Voucher searches up 47.5% in a year
August 17, 2009
UK Internet searches for discount vouchers have increased by 47.5% over the last 12 months. The increase in searches for a portfolio of 4,500+ voucher-related search terms between the weeks ending 02/08/2008 and 01/08/2009 clearly reflects British consumers’ hunger for... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 03:25 PM
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In Categories Economy | Food | Movies | Retail | Search | Social networks | Travel
Top 10 websites of 2008
March 03, 2009
We published the results of the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards today. These list the 10 most visited websites in the UK during 2008 for over 60 industry categories. You can see the full list on the awards microsite, but... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 02:50 PM
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In Categories Economy | Employment | Fashion | Food | Government | Shopping and Classifieds | Top UK websites | Weather
Eating out: afternoon tea, listing sites and the MoneySavingExpert
November 14, 2008
Last month we published a blog about recipe searches and promised to follow up with another post about eating out and restaurant websites. Well, here’s the post and there’s a lot to cover, from afternoon tea at the Ritz to... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:30 AM
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In Categories Economy | Food | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Travel
What comfort food recipes tell us about UK search behaviour
October 28, 2008
Last week Heather Hopkins pointed out that food sites are weathering the financial storm in the US. We like to encourage (internal!) plagiarism at Hitwise, so in that spirit I decided to carry out some similar analysis of the UK... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 03:00 PM
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In Categories Food | Search
Supermarkets continue to grow online
October 17, 2008
While looking at the fastest growing retail sectors for this month’s retail webinar, we noticed that our Grocery and Alcohol has been doing well this year. As the chart below illustrates, its share of Internet visits has been increasing gradually... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:00 PM
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In Categories Food | Gadgets | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Pasta Hut vs. Pizza Hut
October 09, 2008
Pizza Hut made the headlines earlier in the week after rebranding itself as Pasta Hut in the UK. If the move really is just a clever bit of PR, as some people suspect, then it seems to have worked. In... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM
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In Categories Branding | Food
Has the credit crunch killed ethical consumerism?
September 17, 2008
While the troubles facing the finance industry have picked up the headlines this week, the impact of the credit crunch continues to be felt elsewhere in the economy. One assumption people have made is that consumers will be less inclined... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 05:00 PM
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In Categories Charities | Economy | Food | Government | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
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...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:30 AM
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In Categories BBC | Demographics | Food | News and Media | TV
Sainsbury’s website downtime analysis
June 19, 2008
Yesterday the BBC reported that Sainsbury’s had suspended its online grocery store, and looking at the site this morning that still seems to be the case. One of the great things about Hitwise’s daily data is that we are able... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
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In Categories Food | News and Media | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds
Retail price index and organic food
March 20, 2008
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has just announced the latest round of changes to the basket of goods it uses to calculate the UK retail price index (RPI). In addition to providing inflation figures, the make up of the... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM
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In Categories Christmas | Food | Gadgets | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Group Recipes: social networking for the hungry
February 11, 2008
Since publishing our social networking report last month, people have been asking us to identify successful niche social networking / web 2.0 sites. Wel,l here’s one that saw a real jump in traffic last week: Group Recipes. The site operates... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 04:50 PM
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In Categories Food | Search | Social networks
Moonpig.com, Valentine’s poems and romantic breaks
February 07, 2008
Online card delivery company Moonpig.com is currently experiencing its highest ever level of UK Internet traffic in the run up to Valentine’s Day. For the week ending 2 February 2008, UK Internet visits to the website have grown six-fold by... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 05:00 PM
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In Categories Food | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Travel | Women
Supermarkets' online share increasing
December 13, 2007
Supermarkets have increased their share of the UK online retail market in the run up to Christmas. A Hitwise custom category of the top 45 supermarket operated websites accounted for 6.6% of all UK Internet visits to Shopping and Classifieds... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 04:10 PM
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In Categories Food | Gadgets | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Christmas market search trends
December 05, 2007
The setting up of a Christmas market just around the corner from the Hitwise UK office made me realize just how popular these seasonal attractions have become. According to Wikipedia, the first Christmas market was held in Dresden in 1434,... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:00 AM
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In Categories Christmas | Food | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Travel
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
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In Categories Financial Services | Food | Social networks
Delia Smith is top chef: let her cook cake
August 31, 2007
Bill recently wrote a very interesting Time column on America’s favourite foods. Following his example I decided to investigate the BBC Food website – the most visited food website in the UK - for this week’s Siteseeing column in the... Continue reading...
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:40 PM
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In Categories Food | Search
