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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Government

Searches for climate change and energy efficiency (Blog Action Day)

October 15, 2009

Today is Blog Action Day and, as with last year, Alan Long has beaten me to it with an excellent post on this year’s topic, climate change. I’m taking a similar approach, looking at climate changes related searches in the... Continue reading...

Iran searches and Twitter

June 23, 2009

Given the current political situation in the country, we were expecting to see a spike in searches for ‘iran’ last week. As the chart below illustrates, there were more searches for Iran during the week ending 20/06/09 than for Iraq,... Continue reading...

Local Internet data: Liverpool example

June 15, 2009

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at the Digital Editors Network forum, an event organized by Francois Nel from the Journalism Leaders Program at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). One of the topics that came up during... Continue reading...

MPs’ expenses update: Telegraph picks up 1 in every 756 UK page views

May 19, 2009

Now that the MPs’ expenses scandal has led to the resignation of Michael Martin, the House of Commons’ Speaker, it seems like a good to provide an update on the Internet data. As the chart below illustrates, searches for our... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 04:00 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Government | News and Media | Politics

Swine flu searches increase 58-fold

May 05, 2009

UK Internet searches for ‘swine flu’ increased 58-fold last week, making it Britain’s fastest moving search term. Of the 10.9 million distinct search terms we tracked in the UK last week, ‘swine flu’ ranked 20th. As the chart below illustrates,... 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...

What would a Google-Twitter marriage mean?

April 06, 2009

Last week it was reported that Google is in talks to purchase Twitter. Therefore, now seems like a good time to revisit some of the stats, starting with the top level traffic figures. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet... 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...

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...

“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...

Searching for the recession

January 28, 2009

Now that the UK is officially in recession, we thought it would be a good time to look at downturn-related searches. The table below charts the volume of searches for 4 key terms over the last 12 months, and of... Continue reading...

Pre-budget report: tax cuts and petrol prices

November 26, 2008

Given the economic conditions and the various rumours last week, the government’s pre-budget report has received a lot of attention online .Looking at the search data up to last week, you can see from the chart below that searches for... 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...

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...

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...

Fast moving search terms: Olympics, celebrities and exams

August 11, 2008

No prizes for guessing what event dominated the fast moving search term list in the UK last week. Here’s the top 10. 1. beijing 2008 olympic games 2. olympics 3. craig jones 4. morgan freeman 5. olympics 2008 6. bernie... 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...

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...

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...

London Mayoral elections update

April 30, 2008

Last week we analyzed UK Internet traffic relating to the London Mayoral elections. With only one day of campaigning left, I wanted to provide the latest data. The chart below illustrates the daily Internet traffic to the three main candidates’... Continue reading...

Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Government | Politics | Social networks

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...

Amy Winehouse: the benefits of good and bad publicity

February 12, 2008

“Camden Town is burning down” claimed Amy Winehouse during her Grammy acceptance speech and, unfortunately, parts of it actually were. The fire that ravaged through Camden Market at the weekend received a lot of coverage in the press, and as... Continue reading...

Act on C02 campaign an environmental success

January 11, 2008

A lot of new years’ resolutions will have included a promise to reduce carbon footprints. Therefore it was a shrewd move by the Department of Transport to choose this time of year to launch Act on CO2. As the chart... 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...

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.