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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Google

Google Doodle: Sesame Street vs. Wallace and Gromit

November 10, 2009

Last week Google replaced its traditional logo with two Google Doodles. The first celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Wallace and Gromit, the second Sesame Street’s fortieth birthday. The chart below illustrates the increase in searches for the terms ‘wallace and... 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...

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...

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...

Google Maps visits up 41% following UK Street View launch

March 20, 2009

Following the launch of Google Street View in the UK yesterday (19 March 2009), UK Internet visits to Google Maps UK Increased by 41%. This was the busiest ever day for Google Maps in the UK, and as a result... Continue reading...

TV and Games are UK's most searched for subjects

March 09, 2009

For our second guest posting on the UK blog, I’d like to hand over to Richard Seymour, Hitwise UK Client Intelligence Analyst, to take us through some of the research he has carried out recently on UK Search Engines. For... 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...

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...

Yahoo!, Google and MSN: news services compared

October 20, 2008

After we published our blog post on news aggregators last month, one commenter asked why we hadn’t included Yahoo! News? I answered that Yahoo’s News service is different from Google’s because is contains its own content, rather than links to... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 02:30 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Email | Google | News and Media

The role of news aggregators in the UK

October 02, 2008

News aggregators come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from straight forward aggregators (e.g. Google News) to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious. When creating a custom category of the top sites in the UK we... Continue reading...

Google Docs benefits from growth in job searches

September 19, 2008

Like Heather Dougherty in the US, we have also been looking at the impact of the credit crunch on employment sites. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet traffic to Business and Finance – Employment and Training websites has shot... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: LHC, big bang, Andy Murray and XL

September 15, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were: 1. large hardron collider 2. hurricane ike 3. lhc 4. xl 5. big bang 6. tour of britain 7. itv f1 8. andy murray 9. black hole 10.... 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...

Google Chrome – initial stats

September 03, 2008

We’ve had a number of requests for Google Chrome stats, so here they are… Yesterday (September 2nd) the homepage of the Google’s new browser was the 130th most visited in the UK, accounting for 0.06% of all UK Internet visits.... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 12:00 PM | (11) | (1)
In Categories Google | Search

9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded

August 14, 2008

We’ve just updated our data on navigational / branded search in the UK for our new research report, Managing Your Brand Online. During May 2008, 88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were branded in... Continue reading...

Knife crime searches: statistics, prevention and geography

July 24, 2008

At Hitwise we believe that our search data provides an unprecedented insight into what people are thinking. This information has a huge number of uses, from spotting the latest hot band to measuring the popularity of any number of products,... Continue reading...

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...

Summer sales and email marketing

July 01, 2008

The summer sales are now in full swing, as you’ve probably noticed when walking around your local shopping centre / high street. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet users continue to look for a bargain. Searches for both the... 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...

Google holiday logos and Wikipedia growth

June 17, 2008

When looking at our Fast Moving Search Terms list a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see the term ‘walter gropius’ at the top of the list for All Categories. Why the sudden interest in the founder of the... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 12:00 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Education | Google | Search

Blog traffic reaches all time high

June 10, 2008

UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all time high last week. As the chart below illustrates, Blogs and Personal Websites accounted for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits. Taking the slightly longer... Continue reading...

Postcode searches and SEO

June 03, 2008

One of the more curious and unexpected fast moving search terms that we spotted on Monday was ‘b78 3tw’. As you can probably guess, this is a postcode. Specifically, it is the postcode of Drayton Manor Park, a popular theme... Continue reading...

Burma / Myanmar Google charity donations

May 09, 2008

The humanitarian crisis caused by Cyclone Nargis in Burma / Myanmar.has elicited a huge amount of public sympathy and support. Yesterday we noticed that Google had taken the unprecedented step of placing a link to a special Cyclone donation service... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Charities | Google

Google delivers over a third of all UK traffic – trademark changes will have a significant impact

April 28, 2008

The top 100 Google Internet properties sent over one third of all Internet traffic to websites in the UK during March 2008. A custom category consisting of the 100 most visited Google-owned web properties in the UK accounted for 36.55%... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM | (11) | (1)
In Categories Google | News and Media | Search

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

Google UK trademark changes and navigational search

April 07, 2008

Google has announced that it will allow non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms in the UK and Ireland from May 5th, thus bringing the British and Irish markets in line with the US and Canada. This announcement has sparked... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM | (3) | (0)
In Categories Google | Search

How popular is Google's "pages from the UK" search option?

April 02, 2008

Have you ever wondered what proportion of people searching on Google UK (www.google.co.uk) choose the ‘pages from the UK’ option? Following on from our recent analysis of the local search market in the UK, we were certainly interested in answering... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 05:00 PM | (19) | (1)
In Categories Google | Search

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.