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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Mosaic lifestyle

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...

How the Budget could affect new business start ups

March 22, 2011

Tomorrow Chancellor George Osborne will deliver his first March Budget to outline the government’s spending plans for the next financial year. A lot of the focus of the Budget is likely to be around fuel duty and interest rates, but... Continue reading...

Post Earthquake people want to fly to Japan, not away from it

March 17, 2011

The devastating events unfolding in Japan in the wake of the biggest earthquake recorded in the country’s history has been dominating news headlines since the earthquake struck Sendai on Friday 11 March. Unsurprisingly, UK Internet users have been searching for... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 03:45 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Mosaic lifestyle | Travel

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

2010 Online: the year in review

December 21, 2010

I can scarcely believe that a whole year has passed since I was sitting here writing the 2009 review, but 12 months to the day here we are, and it’s been another fascinating year in the digital world. Once again... Continue reading...

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...

Online cashing in on Will and Kate’s royal wedding engagement

November 17, 2010

The announcement of a royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton was barely hours old before the country started looking to cash in on the event yesterday. The media revealed that the wedding ring will be fashioned from Welsh... 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...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 05:40 PM | (0)
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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

UK DIY and Screwfix

April 03, 2008

Apparently, Good Friday is the busiest DIY day of the year, so I wasn’t surprised to see that traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds: House and Garden category increased noticeably during the Easter week. Slightly more unexpected, however, is the... Continue reading...

Miss Bimbo: who is visiting?

April 01, 2008

The ‘virtual fashion game’ Miss Bimbo has picked up a lot of press - Google News UK was the second ranked site receiving up traffic from the search term ‘miss bimbo’ last week. The website allows users to create a... 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...

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.