Hitwise is proud to launch the first annual awards recognising excellence in online performance through public popularity. Results have been based on the online surfing habits of 3 million Australian Internet users during 2004.

An awards celebration and networking evening will be held showcasing the most popular websites for 2004 across 154 industry categories. Each winner of the 154 industry verticals is now a nominee for the overall industry award.

The event will cater for an exclusive audience of 'Australian online thought leaders' and will be an online industry networking night enabling you to meet with other top online performers and exchange insights regarding what is working for them. The media will also be invited to the event to publicise the winners.

Where and When

February 25, 2005
Luna Park Sydney - Crystal Ballroom, Milsons Point
7pm to Midnight

Tickets

$95 per ticket or a group of 10 tickets for $850
Entertainment (DJ and a high profile MC), canapés, beer wine and soft drinks included.

Please book your seats at www.internetawards.com.au

Australians Eager to Help

Australian Internet users were drawn to many Asian newspaper websites where they hoped to gain a first-hand insight into the affected areas struck by the natural disaster. On the day after the Tsunami, Hitwise found that the following News & Media websites rose sharply in rankings:

The Star Online (www.thestar.com.my) rose 50 places to be ranked 16th for the week ending December 27, Sri Lanka's Daily News (www.dailynews.lk) rose 71 places to be ranked 35th for the same period, and Express India (www.expressindia.com) climbed almost 100 places to be ranked 65th.

As a result of the disaster, the website for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade www.smarttraveller.gov.au which features information on rules and guidelines for travelling throughout the world rose over 1,100% in market share from 8,774th position to 599th between the 25th January and 27th January.

Visits to Humanitarian websites have also increased by over 550% since the 26th December. Hitwise reports that the website "Tsunami Help" - tsunamihelp.blogspot.com has made its debut online, ranking 5th among all other humanitarian websites visited by Australian Internet users. The website provides news and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts for the Tsunami. Yesterday, more than 12% of Australian Internet users who visited the website bookmarked it to their favourites on their Internet browsers demonstrating an intention to return.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the past 12 weeks ending 15/01/2005 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Health and Medical - Wellbeing' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'weight watchers' representing 0.89% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Health and Medical - Wellbeing' industry.

In an effort to compete with the likes of Google, Ask Jeeves, MSN, Copernic and others, Yahoo! has released their latest search facility - Yahoo! Desktop Search.

Yahoo! Desktop search makes good use of the files on your PC, indexing over 200 different file types including your outlook emails, attachments, contacts, Microsoft Office files, images and music.

Yahoo! Desktop Search is a full screen application, presenting a clean, intuitive interface, similar to Windows explorer. However it is packed with a number of invaluable advanced search features that enables the user to quickly and easily search their computer.

The user can limit their search to filenames, type, dates and time, size or path information. Yahoo calls these "advanced search" options, and are extremely easy to use.

Search results are displayed in Explorer-like format as filenames with additional information such as directory location, file size, file format etc with the results.

Yahoo! Desktop search separates itself from the pack via its unique preview pane located on the right hand side of the application. Instead of having to click through the search results to get a better understanding of the files found, the search tool previews the content from within the application - with surprisingly quick performance.

When the user previews a document the search term is highlighted, audio and video files are played using the default Windows media player. Though Yahoo! Desktop could be seen as just another contender in the desktop search arena, it does bring a number of useful and powerful search features to the market.

For more information about search marketing visit the Hitwise Search Marketing website

Fast Mover - Ansearch

www.ansearch.com.au


November Rank: 120
December Rank: 37
Positions Jumped: 83

Ansearch is the latest addition to the competitive Australian search industry. Designed around the concept of delivering results based on user behaviour and popularity, the search engine has proved successful since its launch last November. Using MySearch (www.mysearch.com.au) to trial its new search engine technologies and online marketing campaigns prior to launching, Ansearch takes on the view of 'less is more' and incorporates only a small footprint of data so that its search results are more accurate.

Hitwise data shows that Ansearch has gained a solid following since launching last year, and if it continues increasing its market share, it is sure to be the search engine to watch in 2005. Looking at Hitwise data for the Computers and Internet - Search Engines and Directories category, Ansearch debuted as the 120th most popular Australian Search Engine and Directory in November, and then climbed to be the 37th most popular by the end of December. Recent weekly data shows Ansearch as the 29th most popular Australian site in its category, a commendable effort considering there are over 100 established Australian Search Engines and Directories competing for a spot in the top ten. The site has also recorded an impressive bookmark percentage, with the latest weekly data showing 18.18% of visitors to www.ansearch.com.au have bookmarked the site, demonstrating their intention to return and use the search engine again.

Recent Hitwise statistics show that over 60% of Australian Internet users visit local search engines to surf online. The average session duration for the Computers and Internet - Search Engines and Directories category during the week ending 22/01/05 was 8 minutes. This is a decrease of 31 seconds since the same time last year possibly demonstrating that Australian Internet users are increasingly becoming better at searching online - or perhaps search engines are returning better results then one year ago.

Category Spotlight: Community - Humanitarian

This section includes all specific non-government, non-profit organisations focused on humanitarian, welfare and aid.

Top 10 Community - Humanitarian sites for Australian audiences		Local Competitiveness Index
World Vision Australia Australian Red Cross The Hunger Site Oxfam Australia BoysTown Lotteries WaveAid CARE Australia UNICEF Australia World Vision United States Barnardo's Australia		64.0% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

Media queries at Hitwise

If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as "Hitwise Australia - www.hitwise.com.au".

Additionally - if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact James Borg at james.borg@hitwise.com.

About this Newsletter

This monthly email Newsletter is designed to provide Hitwise subscribers with analysis of new developments, industry trends and competitive activity. The powerful real-time web intelligence capabilities of Hitwise and a continual flow of additional research findings make this an indispensable business resource.

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Brought to you by the team at Hitwise Australia - www.hitwise.com.au.

Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, January 2005