About Hitwise
Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.
Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific
Analyst Weblog
« Da Vinci Code Prompts Spiritual and Travel Destination Searches | Bebo leads against MySpace in NZ »
ZoomIn launches behind the scenes of Aussie Googleplex
May 19, 2006
I've been following the performance of NZ mapping website, ZoomIn and was particularly interested when they launched their AU version about a week ago, prior to the opening of the Australian Googleplex. Some amusing copy on how ZoomIn describes the use of their API:
The ZoomIn API is available for homebrew developers, cyberspace navigators and mash-up artists alike.
You should use our API for only good - never evil. Evil leads to sadness, sadness leads to hate, hate leads to the darkside.
This mantra sounds very similar to another search engine doesn't it? I thought I'd look on Hitwise to see how ZoomIn Australia compares so far to Google Maps. Below is a keyword breakdown of the search terms to both websites for the week ending May 13, 2006, with the caveat that a full 12 week period of rolling data has been collected for Google Maps.
This comparison shows that ZoomIn's portion of search traffic has a larger composition of 3 and 4 word search phrases. ZoomIn's 3 and 4 word search phrases account for 53.57% of its traffic compared to 33.38% for Google Maps - a difference of 20%. Hitwise search analysis shows that Google Maps receives a number of searches related to its brand, while ZoomIn is receiving predominantly location-specific searches.
As Google Maps prepares to launch its local AU offering, the war on enhancing the user experience will depend on the ability to provide highly specific results tied in with local search. I've checked on ZoomIn for my local pub, and was pleased to see that it had already been plotted by another user!
Tweet
Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:41 AM
| 
(0)
In Categories Search
Archives (view all posts)
Categories