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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America
Analyst Weblog
Category Archives: Search
iPhone 4 Launch in Canada
August 11, 2010
On Friday July 30, the iPhone 4 was launched in Canada and Hitwise data reveals that Canadians turned to social networks, blogs and retailers after searching for the highly coveted phone. In the week after the launch (week to 7... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:38 AM
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In Categories Canadian Insights | Search | Shopping & Classifieds
How Canadians Reach Retail Websites
July 28, 2010
Canadians are heavy users of search engines and as we see in most markets, Search Engines are the top source of upstream visits to retail websites. In the month of June 2010, one third (33.21%) of upstream visits to Shopping... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:01 AM
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In Categories Canadian Insights | Search | Shopping & Classifieds
Google Travel - ITA Acquisition
July 07, 2010
Google Thursday announced an agreement to acquire ITA Software, a flight information software company. We at Hitwise have been waiting for such an announcement for some time. In 2006 when Google Finance was launched, we looked at the top downstream... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:04 AM
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In Categories Search | Travel
Sarah Palin Frenzy Picks Up Online
November 24, 2009
With her new book out, an appearance on Oprah and a controversial photo on the cover of Newsweek, searches for "sarah palin" rocketed last week. Searches for "sarah palin" increased more than 3 fold last week to account for 0.024%... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 01:03 PM
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In Categories News and Media | Personalities | Search
Tylenol Recall - Parents Using Yahoo! Search?
September 29, 2009
Last week's recall by Johnson & Johnson of some of its liquid Tylenol, in particular some Children's Tylenol, products has caused a stir among parents. I was not alone in searching for details of the recall online before I dashed... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:10 AM
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In Categories Branding | Search
Flyers the Coupons of Canada?
September 09, 2009
In looking through Search Term Variation reports on Hitwise for some top Canadian retailers, I kept noticing the word "flyer" included with the brands' names. For example, a Search Term Variations report for "loblaws" puts "loblaws flyer" at #3 behind... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:55 AM
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In Categories Search | Shopping & Classifieds
Bing Leads in Successful Canadian Searches
September 02, 2009
A couple of weeks ago we posted data on the success rate of Canadian searches, noting in particular that only 30% of Canadian Internet searches are "successful". A couple of readers asked us to share success rate by search engine.... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:34 AM
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In Categories Search
Flight Searches Vary Dramatically by Engine
August 19, 2009
We often hear about how search engines compare in market share of searches or relevance of search results but what about query content? Analysis of query content for the travel category reveals that the search terms consumers use on the... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 04:59 PM
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In Categories Search | Travel
Only 70% of Canadian Searches are Successful
August 18, 2009
Hitwise analysis included in the forthcoming Hitwise Canada Search Report reveals that nearly one third (30%) of Canadian Internet searches are not successful - forcing Canadians to re-search to find relevant results. An average of 70% of searches in Canada... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 05:43 PM
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In Categories Search
Canadian Cheapskate Travellers
July 23, 2009
It seems we Canadians are cheapskates when it comes to travel. The qualifier "cheap" is a popular one to include in searches in all of the markets we monitor. In Canada, there were 1,746 different search terms that included the... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:00 AM
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In Categories Search | Travel
What Canadians are Searching for Online
June 09, 2009
Last week, we did a blog post on the top categories visited by Canadian internet users. We followed that up with a post looking at the number of words used in queries. To follow this theme, today we are posting... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:06 AM
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In Categories Search
One and Two Word Queries Dominate Canadian Internet Searches
June 08, 2009
More than half of Canadian search terms contain only one or two words. In the twelve weeks to 30th May 2009, 51.56% of Canadian search terms contained one or two words. Hitwise recently launched Hitwise Canada and as a follow... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:07 AM
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In Categories Search
How Canadians Spend Their Time Online
May 27, 2009
We recently launched Hitwise Canada and in my first post using our Canadian data, I wanted to take a high level view of what my fellow Canadians are doing online and how that compares to their US and UK counterparts.... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 05:02 PM
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In Categories Search
Paid Search Traffic Share Down 26%
May 13, 2009
Hitwise data indicate that the share of search traffic coming from paid listings is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic. In the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:24 AM
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In Categories Search
Twitter - Google Marriage - what would it mean?
April 08, 2009
To piggy back on a post my colleague across the pond, Robin Goad, did yesterday, we thought we'd revisit some of the stats to better understand how things would look if Google were to acquire Twitter. As the chart below... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:31 AM
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In Categories Search
Yahoo! Mail More than One Third of Yahoo! Traffic
March 05, 2009
Tuesday, Yahoo!'s new CEO, Carol Bartz spoke to analysts and one comment in particular caught my attention. According to an article on ZDNet, she said "Yahoo Mail is becoming increasingly critical to the company. Yahoo Mail has a billion emails... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:27 AM
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In Categories Search
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... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:43 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Books Drives Visits to Book Retailers
October 29, 2008
Yesterday, Google settled the long-standing lawsuit over book-scanning, agreeing to pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning efforts and allowing it to make millions of out-of-print books available for reading and purchasing online. Three years ago,... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:25 PM
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In Categories Search | Shopping & Classifieds
Search Value Determinants A Year On
August 07, 2008
About a year ago, we shared some lists of "search value determinants" to consider the language people use when they enter search queries. We looked at what Americans search using popular modifiers and I thought it would be interesting to... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:29 AM
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In Categories Search
MSN Property Breakdown and Growth Areas
July 16, 2008
Last week I promised to post a property breakdown for MSN, similar to the data I posted for Yahoo! and Google. The following table lists the top 20 MSN and Live properties based on share of US Internet visits in... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:18 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Properties Breakdown
July 09, 2008
In response to comments in my post last week on Yahoo!'s property breakdown, I promised to share similar data for Google and MSN. Today I will pick on Google (earlier today I posted predictions for Google's next move post-Lively). This... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:57 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Lively - Google Music or Google Autos Next?
July 09, 2008
Google yesterday launched Lively, a browser based virtual world. Back in January we did a post predicting Google's next move using Hitwise clickstream data. At that time, we predicted Google Health and a Google metaverse or virtual world. Google Health... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:00 AM
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In Categories Search
Yahoo! Property Breakdown and Sum of the Parts
July 03, 2008
Rumors are circulating about another attempt by Microsoft to acquire part of Yahoo!. The latest rumors suggest that Microsoft will try to buy Yahoo! Search with a media company (i.e. Time Warner or News Corp) absorbing the rest of the... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:44 AM
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In Categories Search
Travel Category Paid & Organic Search Benchmarks
June 17, 2008
In this second of two posts on the Travel report we issued last week, I wanted to share some findings from analysis we did on paid and organic traffic. In our analysis we noticed a huge difference in the ratio... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 07:32 AM
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In Categories Search | Travel
Online Travel Query Content is Changing
June 16, 2008
Last week we published a report on the Travel sector looking at how consumer search behavior has changed. I will highlight a couple of interesting findings from the report on this blog. In this first of two posts, I want... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:15 AM
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In Categories Search | Travel
Google Users Big Spenders Online - Update
June 13, 2008
I got a request today to update the chart I posted back in February comparing the online audience for Yahoo! Search and Google.com given yesterday's announcement about a advertising deal between the two. Last time I did the analysis I... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:53 AM
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In Categories Search
Internet Searches Match Decline in Existing Home Sales - Revised
April 25, 2008
Legend has it that Bill Tancer (my boss) bought and sold his last house using Hitwise search data. After reading yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about the continued decline in home sales and the stabilizing of housing prices, I checked... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:57 AM
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In Categories Search
MSN Search and Ask Audience Profile
February 21, 2008
I got a few requests in my post last week with Yahoo! Search and Google's audience profile to show the same data for Ask and MSN Search. In response, I created the following two Lifestyle Quadrant Analyses. The first figure... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:58 AM
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In Categories Search
SI Swimsuit Issue - Radical Change in Search Behavior
February 20, 2008
Sports Illustrated has published its annual Swimsuit Issue. I noticed the website in my weekly fast movers report and thought it could make a fun post. When I looked at the data however, something struck me as really odd. The... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:21 AM
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In Categories Search
Yahoo! Search Draws Younger Audience; Google Users Big Spenders Online
February 15, 2008
In my post earlier in the week, I mentioned that Yahoo! Search attracts a younger audience than Google. I promised a post with figures to back up my claim (sorry I am a day late - forgot it was Valentine's... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:06 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Properties Breakdown - by Pages
February 07, 2008
I wanted to follow up on a comment I received on my post last week with the Google Properties Breakdown. Gonçalo asks a great question - whether the ranking changes much if we look at page views rather than visits... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:00 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Properties Breakdown
January 31, 2008
We all know that Google's strength is in search - but how dominant is search compared with other Google properties and where is Google's growth coming from? The following table shows the top 20 Google properties based on share of... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:08 AM
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In Categories Search
Google Health - Predicting Google's Next Move
January 29, 2008
Will it be health, travel or a metaverse ala Second Life? Predicting Google's next move is always tricky. Last week, Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped pointed to a Google Health Login Page, which looks certain to launch... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:30 AM
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In Categories Search
Wikia Launch & Mahalo Growth
January 10, 2008
This week's launch of Wikia Search is the latest example of a human powered search engine. Mahalo and Cha-Cha are two other recent entrants. This week we've seen a spike in daily visits to Wikia Search, as you'd expect. In... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:15 AM
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In Categories Search
Knol - Numbers to Lend Context to Google's Announcement
December 17, 2007
Last week's announcement that Google would launch Knol, dubbed by most as a Wikipedia competitor, has sparked controversy and even consternation among some. To provide context to the announcement (and a clear rationale for why Google would launch the service)... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:10 AM
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In Categories Reference | Search
Searches for Credit Cards Soar Ahead of Holiday Shopping
November 15, 2007
The market share of US Internet searches for "credit cards" nearly doubled (+98%) in the past four weeks and were up 20% year on year last week. Searches for "credit cards" experience a fairly predictable pattern with spikes in August... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:20 AM
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In Categories Search
Gas Prices - Who Cares?
November 13, 2007
Gas prices hit $3 a gallon and continue to rise as they catch up with record high oil prices. We saw a 6 fold increase in the share of US Internet searches for "gas prices" last week and the term... Continue reading...
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:59 AM
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In Categories Search
