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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

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YouTube Site Search - Lil Wayne Tops

January 29, 2009

Today we are releasing data and analysis on the top 50 search terms entered into YouTube's own search engine, revealing that 72% of searches are music related. We did this analysis using our Conversions technology which we use for custom projects for clients. We, on the Hitwise research team, requested this data when we saw the news in November that Google would be testing an auction based system for ads on YouTube.

We wondered, what kind of search terms are people entering into the YouTube site search engine that might attract paid listings. Our development team was most helpful and ran the report for us. The December data shows rapper Lil Wayne at the top of the list, followed by "twilight", "beyonce", "single ladies" and "soulja boy". (The top 20 are included at the end of this post.)

I looked at these top five terms to see whether they are seeing much paid search activity across the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search et al). In December, 5.10% of searches for "twilight" went to a paid listing, 3.08% for "lil wayne", 2.29% for "single ladies", 1.43% for "beyonce" and 0.28% for "soulja boy". Compared to the term "wii fit" which saw 34.24% clicks on paid listings in December this doesn't seem like much. While we can't assume that retailers will be willing to spend at the same rate for YouTube searches as for Google searches, a few paid clicks here and there can't hurt Google's earnings.

Also, further down the list are other perhaps more promising terms such as "hypnosis", "pokemon", and "bodybuilding". It will be interesting to see whether Google finally finds a way to make money from YouTube.

YouTube Search Terms.png

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:43 AM | (3) | (65)
In Categories Search

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This is because the main use for YouTube right now is to listen to copyrighted music and Lil Wayne is the hottest thing with the youngsters. If you look at sites like Hulu, that offer up real Video fare you'll notice that watching habits are completely different a mirror TV audiences.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/video-sites

Posted by Mike Smarsh | January 29, 2009 03:57 PM

Wow.That is priceless information plus never would i have thought many of the terms there had such popularity. I am impressed yet mind boggled.
Kind regards
Flosslounge

Posted by flosslounge | January 29, 2009 06:24 PM

I like your reports is very useful for me because I am a SEO consultant http://www.pakistansoftwarehouse.com
but I need some more information about what people searching in Google and Yahoo.
where I can see which keywords is searching I used google trends but is just showing only top current keywords. and all those keywords mostly related to current affairs.
I need to know hot keywords for retails stores, b2b website.
Thank Syed

Posted by syed | January 29, 2009 06:30 PM

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Heather Hopkins

Senior Online Analyst, Hitwise

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