Australians Embrace Commonwealth
Games
Hitwise takes a look into how Australian Internet users
interacted with the Internet to find out more about the Melbourne 2006
Commonwealth Games.
A month prior to the start of the games
(February 18), the official website of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, www.melbourne2006.com.au was the 438th most visited site
in Australia, however by March 18, soon after the start of the event, it
was the 34th most visited site. In regard to Sports sites, www.melbourne2006.com.au became the number 1 Sports
website by visits on March 15, after that date, it jockeyed for the top
position with CricInfo - www.cricinfo.com.
Demographic data suggest that
this popularity was spear-headed by Victorian Internet users - with a
68.72% market share; male users contributing 56.82% of user share; and,
out of which 29.35% were between 45 and 54 years old.
Based on
monthly Hitwise Clicksteam data for February 2006, in the weeks leading up
to the Commonwealth Games, Internet users were frequenting websites such
as Visit Victoria (www.visitvictoria.com.au), and Ticketmaster7 (www.ticketmaster7.com), before heading to the Melbourne
2006 Commonwealth Games website. Both the Visit Victoria and Ticketmaster7
websites had links to the 2006 Commonwealth Games page, which in part
explains the traffic heading from these websites to the Commonwealth Games
site. Alternatively, the traffic from the Visit Victoria to the
Commonwealth Games website, could be due to the number of tourists
travelling to Melbourne for the Games, and looking to find out about
accommodation, attractions and events in Melbourne. In addition, the
upstream traffic heading from the Ticketmaster7 website, was most likely
due to those purchasing the ir Games tickets from Ticketmaster7.
3
out of 5 of the most popular websites visited by Australian Internet users
after visiting the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games website were other
Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games related sites. Of these, the
Commonwealth Games Transport Information website (metlink.melbourne2006.com.au) was understandably the
most popular, with Commonwealth Games ticket holders able to travel free
on public transport and provided with little alternative, with no car
parking available at the majority of the Games venues. Similarly, the
VicRoads Travel Time Information (traffic.vicroads.vic.gov.au) website was the 7th most
popular site, which could be explained by the many road closures, route
modifications and parking restrictions enforced in Melbourne during the
Commonwealth Games.
'Search Engine' websites played a significant
role in directing traffic to the 'Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games'
website, which received 40.60% of its visits from 'Search Engines' web
sites such as Google, during February 2006. This was 23.06% above the
average visits received from 'Search Engines' web sites (17.54%) by the
'Sports' industry.
Search terms used across different search
engines over recent weeks allowed Hitwise to understand which parts of the
commonwealth games was most important for Australians. Some of the more
interesting and popular search terms used by Australian Internet users
resulting in visits to the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games website were:
'karak', 'baton relay', 'queens baton', 'commonwealth games road
closures', 'm2006', 'tania luiz', 'melbourne festival', 'commonwealth
games competing countries'.
As far as the popularity of the
different sporting events go, Australian's searched for the following
sports in order of popularity before visiting the official Commonwealth
Games website: 'marathon route', 'swimming trials', 'swimming',
'basketball', 'boxing', 'gymnastics', 'hockey', 'rugby', 'netball' and
'shooting'.
Search Terms - Industry Search Term Report for Music
The following report lists the most popular terms typed
into a search engine over the 12 weeks ending March 18, 2006 that resulted
in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Music' industry.
For example, the most popular search term was 'lyrics' representing 1.22%
of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise
in the 'Music' industry.
|
Search
Term |
Share (%) |
| 1. |
lyrics |
1.22% |
| 2. |
guitar tabs |
0.61% |
| 3. |
song lyrics |
0.50% |
| 4. |
big day out |
0.27% |
| 5. |
music |
0.26% |
| 6. |
free music downloads |
0.19% |
| 7. |
the veronicas |
0.17% |
| 8. |
u2 |
0.16% |
| 9. |
take 40 |
0.16% |
| 10. |
video hits |
0.13% |
Hitwise for Business Development
Because Hitwise monitors the performance of over 500,000
websites across over 160 industry categories every day, only Hitwise can
provide sales teams with in-depth analyses of prospective and current
customers to help increase sales.
Hitwise can help business
identify new and potential clients, learn more about their online
activities and evaluate the success of your relationship. Some of the
business development questions Hitwise can help answer are:
- Who are all the key players in a specific industry?
- How does my prospect generate traffic?
- What are the new websites in the industry?
- Since conducting business with my company, have my clients' online
performances improved?
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.
Hitwise Australia Newsletter -
March 2006 
Real-time competitive
intelligence
