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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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NZ Election - Politics Category Visits at all Time High

November 11, 2008

The New Zealand election held on 8 November 2008 drew an all time high in daily visits to the Hitwise Lifestyle – Politics industry by NZ Internet users; 3.5 times greater than the daily average over a three year period. News & Media and Government – National websites also spiked in visits on 8 November by 12.1% and 36.1% respectively compared to the previous day, highlighting voter engagement with the online channel during the election.

Decision08, a sister website to 3 News, shot through to the top ranking in the Politics industry on 8 November 2008, accounting for 20.85% share of visits, representing a 3.9 fold increase on the previous day. The day following the election, the National Party website became the leading site in the Politics industry with 14.32% share, as users sought more information on the National Party leader, John Key, and their election win.

TVNZ and Elections New Zealand were also fast moving websites on 8 November 2008. TVNZ increased from a ranking of #25 to #14 amongst all websites, while Elections New Zealand increased from #59 to #26.

Search Opportunities for News and Media Websites

Last week Heather Hopkins wrote that News and Media websites had more opportunity to optimize on generic terms related to the US election. Similarly during the NZ general election, there were opportunities for News and Media websites to receive more traffic from candidate searches. For example, News and Media websites only received 8% of searches for 'helen clark' compared to 19.55% to Government – National websites (12 weeks ending 8/11/08). Searches for 'john key' were most likely to result in a visit to the Politics industry with 23.21% of clicks, compared to 6.36% to News and Media websites. Online publishers should be optimizing for generic terms based around events, in addition to branded search.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 03:08 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Politics