Da Vinci Code Prompts Spiritual and Travel Destination Searches

As the momentum built for the release of The Da Vinci code movie in Australia, consumers assuaged their curiosity on the Internet by researching many of the diverse themes of the mystery novel.

According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, searches for the terms 'da vinci code', 'opus dei' and 'louvre' spiked dramatically for the week ending May 13, 2006. Search Term analysis show there was also consumer interest in the terms 'mary magdalene', 'last supper', 'catholic church' and 'vatican city'.

Sony Pictures (www.sonypictures.com), film distributor of The Da Vinci Code, was the top website to receive traffic on the search term, 'da vinci code' with 16.5% of traffic for the 12 weeks ending May 13, 2006.

Hitwise data reveal that Google Australia (www.google.com.au) directed a significant portion of traffic to the Sony Pictures website, doubling its upstream contribution from 18% to 36% between weeks ending April 15 and April 29, 2006. This may be attributed to a link on the bottom of the Google Search Engine Results Page to a Da Vinci Code game on the Sony Pictures website, attesting to the power of search for cross-media promotion.

Religious online destinations featured prominently in websites to receive traffic on 'da vinci code'. ChristianityToday.com (www.christianitytoday.com) received 4.8% of searches, followed by United Church of God (www.ucg.org.au) with 3.1% and Ignatius Press (www.ignatius.com) with 2.8%, for the week ending May 13, 2006.

Much of the religious controversy surrounding the book and film has been sparked by references to Opus Dei, which purports to be a Catholic institution founded by Saint Josemaria Escriva. Visits to the Opus Dei Australian website (www.opusdei.org.au) increased dramatically by 80% in all categories for the week ending May 13, 2006.

Travel vendors have the potential to benefit from heightened consumer interest in locations mentioned in The Da Vinci Code. Hitwise Alerts show that visits to The Da Vinci Code: Eurostar Quest (quest.eurostar.com) spiked in all categories by 171.7% for the week ending May 13, 2006. Eurostar Quest offers an online competition based on the theme of The Da Vinci Code with the prize of holidays in London and Paris. It will be interesting to observe consumer searches on these destinations as fans of the book flock to cinemas.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 12 weeks ending 20/05/2006 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Entertainment - Arts' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'tattoos' representing 1.31% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Entertainment - Arts' industry.

2006-07 Commonwealth Budget

www.budget.gov.au


Position week ending May 6: 2,466
Position week ending May 10: 79
Positions jumped: 2,387

The 2006-07 Commonwealth Budget was released on Tuesday, May 9 and resulted in a surge of Internet traffic to the official Australian Government Budget site (www.budget.gov.au). On Saturday May 6 it was the 2,387th most visited Australian site; on the day of release it jumped to 94th; and on the day after release it was the 79th. Hitwise weekly data for the week ending May 6 show that it was the 3,291st most popular Australian website and for the week ending May 13 was the 228th. Significant market share increases were also evident in the Government vertical and Government - National sub-vertical.

The Commonwealth of Australia - Commonwealth Budget website received 42.04% of its traffic from search engines for the week ending May 13 (27.99% from Google Australia and 6.23% from ninemsn Search). This was 9.15% above the average traffic received from search engines (32.89%) by the Government industry.

The most popular search terms typed into search engines over the 12 weeks ending 13/05/2006 that resulted in traffic to www.budget.gov.au were: 'budget', 'budget 2006', 'federal budget', '2006 budget' and 'federal budget 2006'. The first use of "Commonwealth" appeared as 'commonwealth budget', which was the 29th most popular search term.

Category Spotlight: Lifestyle - Fashion

This category includes sites that spotlight the latest fashion trends in clothing, or particular labels.

Top 10 Lifestyle - Fashion sites for Australian audiences		Local Competitiveness Index
Vogue Australia Forums Vogue Australia Supre Pumpkin Patch - Australia Jay Jays Sportsgirl Online Glam Victoria's Secret Peter Alexander Witchery		53.9% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, May 2006