Hitwise announces the most popular websites in 2005

Last month Hitwise UK held its inaugural Online Performance Awards at the Institute of Directors. These awards recognise outstanding online business achievement and acknowledge the most successful websites in key industries as defined by the percentage of user visits a website received between January and December 2005.

Winners of the Hitwise UK Annual Online Performance Award for their respective categories, who attended the awards ceremony at the Institute of Directors on March 31, included eBay (Shopping & Classifieds - Auctions), Lloyds TSB (Business and Finance - Banks & Financial Institutions), Play.com (Shopping & Classifieds - Music and Video & Games), Multimap (Travel - Maps), M&M Direct (Shopping & Classifieds - Sports & Fitness), Rightmove (Business and Finance - Property), Tate Online (Entertainment - Arts), Odeon (Entertainment - Movies), Confetti.com (Lifestyle - Weddings), Cricinfo (Sport - Cricket), Gaydar (Lifestyle - Dating), Ticketmaster (Shopping & Classifieds - Ticketing), Kelkoo (Shopping & Classifieds - Rewards & Directories), Cancer Research (Health & Medical - Research) and The AA (Business & Finance - Insurance).

For a complete list of winners and photos of the event, please visit the Hitwise United Kingdom Awards Winners page.

For insight on the factors of success of the award winners, visit our Analyst Weblog.

DIY retailers are entering their busy season with the lead up to Easter typically one of the busiest in terms of share of visits to House and Garden and DIY websites. However, analysis of Hitwise data reveals that it is not only the spring bulbs that have been delayed by inclement weather, but also shopping for garden sheds, garden furniture and green houses.

The good news is that things have picked up in the last 2 weeks, resulting in a rush of visits to home improvement websites over the Easter bank holiday. In 2005, visits to websites in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds - House and Garden category reached their second highest annual peak on 2 April 2005 (second to Christmas), however this year the seasonal lift occurred one week later - during the week ending 8 April.

While searches for "weather" were up 26% year on year the week of 1 April, searches for "garden sheds" were down 50%, searches for "garden furniture" were down 59% and searches for "greenhouses" were down 65%.

Understanding seasonality of consumer search and purchase behaviour and how external factors can influence this, is an important element that can help search marketers fine tune a search marketing campaign.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 weeks ending 15/04/2006 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 'b&q' representing 4.30% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Shopping and Classifieds - House and Garden' industry.

Fast Mover: Facebook.com

www.facebook.com


Position for week ending February 4 - 1,999
Position for week ending April 8 - 230
Positions jumped: 1,769

Facebook (www.facebook.com), the networking site for university and secondary school students, is the latest social networking website to take the UK by storm. Visits to the website have increased ten fold in the last 12 weeks, and the website - open only to students - is now the 23rd most visited Net Community and Chat website in the UK.

Facebook, founded just 2 years ago by students at Harvard to connect with friends and reconnect with old ones, has grown to include over 2,500 colleges and high schools across the world - with members in 25 universities across the UK.

Community websites continue to be one of the fastest growing categories on the internet, with visits growing by 20% since the beginning of February. "Bebo", "Piczo", "Friends Reunited" and "Faceparty" all appeared in the top 20 most searched-for keywords in the UK for the week ending April 8.

News In Brief

Google powers three quarters of UK searches

Google continues to dominate the search market in the UK, powering 74.8% of all UK internet searches for the four weeks ending 1 April. The top four search engines combined powered 95.7% of UK internet searches in the four week period.

MSN.co.uk Search is Google's closest competitor, powering 6.7% of UK internet searches. When combined with its .com property, MSN Search powered 7.8% of searches. Yahoo! Search is the next strongest competitor with searches on Yahoo! Search - UK & Ireland accounting for 5.7% of UK internet searches. Collectively, Yahoo! Search - UK & Ireland and Yahoo! Search powered 7.5% of searches. Ask UK powered 5.4% of UK internet searches. Combining its UK and .com properties, Ask powered 5.6% of searches in the four week period.


Crazy by Gnarls Barkley takes #1

Earlier this month, The Telegraph reported that "pop history was made when a song reached the top of the singles' chart based solely on computer-download sales". Crazy by Gnarls Barkley has been creating a bit of a stir online after the song aired in an ad for Zane Lowe's BBC Radio One show.

Hitwise data reveals that the share of UK internet searches for "crazy" increased 131% for the week ending 1 April. Tune Tribe and 7 Digital seem to have benefited most from the frenzy, with major music sites missing the opportunity to attract visits from the online hit single. Tune Tribe received 9% of visits from searches for "crazy" over the four weeks to 1 April, well ahead of online music rivals. For the same period, Gnarls Barkley's website attracted 41% of visits from searches for "gnarls barkley", while 5% went to 7 Digital, 5% to Manchester Online, and 4% to MySpace, on which Gnarls Barkley has a personal page.

The search terms sending the largest volume of visits to Tune Tribe were "gnarls barkley" and "crazy" and the site has climbed from a ranking of 700 among music sites to 360 for the week ending 15 April. The site's market share of UK visits more than tripled comparing March 29 to the 30th. This is a prime example of a small, nimble online player benefiting from smart and responsive online marketing.

Jet2 visits spike on the back of "Lazy Frog" comment

Comments earlier this month by Jet2's boss about the French air traffic controllers resulted in a corresponding spike in visits to Jet2's website. In a press release, the airline's chief executive Philip Meeson wrote that the company "condemns French strike action and calls for lazy frogs to get back to work!". Keeping alive the rivalry between the French and the Brits, UK internet users rallied to the Jet2 website over the next two days.

Market share of UK internet visits were up 24% on 5 April compared with the day of the flight disruption (3 April 2006), the second largest share of visits the site has attracted since early February. The second highest referrer of visits to Jet2.com was easyJet, who were also affected by the disruption and supported Meeson's comments.

Visits to Aintree.co.uk up 21% from last year

Visits to www.aintree.co.uk, the official website of the Grand National, received 21% more visits on the day of the race than last year - the single biggest betting day of the year.

28.47% of searches on 'grand national' clicked through to the official website of the Grand National, www.aintree.co.uk, with 14.93% going through to www.equine-world.co.uk for the four weeks ending 08/04/2006. "Clan Royal", the joint favourite on the day with "Hedgehunter", was also the most popular horse online, with "Hedgehunter" the second most searched-for horse, and "Numbersixvalverde" in third place.

Sports Betting sites enjoyed a 61% increase in visits in the week leading up to the Grand National.

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 United Kingdom - www.hitwise.co.uk".

Additionally - if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact Jannie Cahill at jannie.cahill@hitwise.com.

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Brought to you by the team at Hitwise United Kingdom - www.hitwise.co.uk.

Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, April 2006