| Australian Searches on Environmental Issues Highlight Concerns and Opportunities |
Recent research from Hitwise Australia highlights Australian online search trends to reveal how the population is engaging with environmental issues.
Carbon - Education and Carbon Trading
For the week ending 02/06/2007, over 50% of searches containing the term 'carbon' sent visits to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com), indicating the need for education on the subject. Carbon Planet (www.carbonplanet.com) is also a very popular online destination for Australians searching for content relating to carbon. Carbon Planet is an Australian company which conducts carbon emission audits and retails carbon credits to individuals and organisations wishing to eliminate their carbon dioxide emissions.
Some of the most popular online searches conducted by Australian Internet users over the past 4 weeks (to 02/06/2007) containing the term 'carbon' are shown in the table below and demonstrate that carbon trading has emerged as a central environmental issue.
The Search for Efficiency
One search term which has become synonymous with energy saving and carbon reduction is the term 'efficient'. Research on the use of this search term by Hitwise Australia demonstrates that 8 of the top 10 searches containing the term 'efficient' are environment-related.
Based on Hitwise Search Intelligence data, for the week ending 02/06/2007, there were 871 search variations containing the term 'efficient' successful at driving traffic to websites over the recent weeks. Since the only commercial website materially benefiting from searches relating to the term 'efficient' is Honda Worldwide (world.honda.com), for a range of manufacturers of energy saving products, there are many opportunities to leverage variations of this term in search campaigns.
Energy - Searching for Alternatives
Australian Internet users are also becoming wiser when searching for energy. Solar energy is the most popular Australian energy-related search term.
When it comes to the energy rating stars, Australian Internet users are most interested in finding the rating for fridges, air-conditioners and heaters. It seems that there are; however, very few businesses benefiting from such searches online. In fact, over 80% of Australian traffic from searches relating to the term 'energy rating' is visiting a government-related website. This presents an opportunity for white-goods and other electronics manufacturers.
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| 1. |
'carbon trading' |
| 2. |
'carbon' |
| 3. |
'carbon dioxide' |
| 4. |
'carbon cycle' |
| 5. |
'carbon neutral' |
| 6. |
'carbon credits' |
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| Industry Search Terms Report for Shopping and Classifieds - House and Garden |
The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 weeks ending 23/06/2007 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Shopping and Classifieds - House and Garden' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'harvey norman' representing 5.96% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Shopping and Classifieds - House and Garden' industry.
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| 1. |
harvey norman |
5.96% |
| 2. |
ikea |
2.69% |
| 3. |
bunnings |
2.59% |
| 4. |
spotlight |
1.44% |
| 5. |
fantastic furniture |
1.32% |
| 6. |
freedom furniture |
1.24% |
| 7. |
ikea australia |
0.59% |
| 8. |
freedom |
0.58% |
| 9. |
mitre 10 |
0.52% |
| 10. |
forty winks |
0.49% |
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| Australian Conservation Foundation - www.acfonline.org.au |
Hitwise Australia reports that the website for The Australian Conservation Foundation (www.acfonline.org.au) has experienced an increase of 21 places amongst Lifestyle - Environment websites to be ranked 12 on 16/06/2007 based on Visits, compared to a rank of 33 two weeks prior.
The data shows that Australian Internet users are using search terms such as 'australian conservation foundation' and 'acf' to reach the website, which has received 31% of its visits from search engines in May.
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| Community - Organisations |
This section includes websites of specific non-profit, non-government organisations, operating in the community - national, cultural or specific language organisations and community clubs. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 23/06/2007 » Ranks by 'Visits'.
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| 62.1% |
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of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.
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| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
54.80% |
| 2. |
Search Engines |
39.87% |
| 3. |
Lifestyle |
7.50% |
| 4. |
Entertainment |
6.04% |
| 5. |
Education |
5.74% |
| 6. |
Business and Finance |
5.21% |
| 7. |
Email Services |
5.17% |
| 8. |
News and Media |
5.03% |
| 9. |
Net Communities and Chat |
4.22% |
| 10. |
Shopping and Classifieds |
4.17% |
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|
| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
24.73% |
| 2. |
Lifestyle |
13.09% |
| 3. |
Business and Finance |
9.53% |
| 4. |
Search Engines |
9.43% |
| 5. |
Entertainment |
8.09% |
| 6. |
Education |
7.18% |
| 7. |
News and Media |
6.47% |
| 8. |
Government |
6.41% |
| 9. |
Community |
6.23% |
| 10. |
Pets and Animals |
6.12% |
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