| How will the economic downturn impact online behaviour? |
House prices have become a British pre-occupation to rival the weather, although the nature of that obsession has changed as the boom times have been replaced with concern about falling values. Broadly speaking there has been a correlation between searches for 'house prices' and actual house prices themselves. As prices have started to decline so have searches, although searches for 'house price crash' have more than trebled over the last 12 months. At the same time, people searching for the basic term 'house prices' are increasingly going to news and media sites to find out the latest bad news, rather than property sites to see how much money they can make.
Of course the price of petrol is going in the opposite direction and, as the recent hauliers strike demonstrated, this is something that concerns both consumers and business. Searches for 'petrol prices' have shot up since Christmas, reaching an all time high in May. Petrolprices.com, a website that allows people to find the cheapest pump prices in their area has increased its market share of UK Internet visits by 270% over the same period.
Sites such as petrolprices.com allow people with a stretched budget to find the best deal, but so far we haven't seen an increase in the use of comparison sites in the broader online retail market. However, consumers are starting to browse more, visiting a greater number of online retailers to find the best price before making a purchase.
Online travel is the final area that is also experiencing a change in behaviour as a result of the economic downturn. Rather than sacrifice their holidays it seems that people are still choosing to go away, but have become more conscious about the costs of doing so. Searches for 'all inclusive holidays' have increased by 24% compared with last year, and it is noticeable that people searching for such packages are more concerned with the 'all inclusive' element than with where they want to actually go.
The full article appeared in the 19 June issue of New Media Age.
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| Apple iPhone - www.apple.com/iphone |
Position for week ending 17 May 2008: 43*
Position for week ending 7 June 2008: 5*
Positions jumped: 38
*Rank within Business and Finance - Telecommunications
During the week ending 7 June 2008, UK Internet visits to the iPhone website reached a new high as speculation amongst Apple fans about the launch of the updated iPhone reached fever pitch. There were over twice the number of visits during that week compared to any of the previous peaks to the website, including the initial iPhone announcement, UK launch and recent price cut.
The Hitwise Search Term Suggestions report for 'iphone' shows that 4 of the top 10 entries relate to the model: 'new iphone', '3g iphone', 'iphone 3g' and 'iphone 2'. The Times newspaper had optimised itself well for these terms, and was the top recipient of traffic for both '3g iphone' and 'new iphone' during the week ending 7 June.
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| Using Hitwise Search Intelligence™ to protect and manage your brand online |
By using Hitwise Search Intelligence™ to protect and manage your brand online, you can identify the threats to your brand posed by competitive search marketing activities and understand how to make the most of the insights revealed by search term data.
For example, Expedia (www.expedia.co.uk) wants to identify websites that receive traffic from searches for its brand. The Hitwise Search Term Analysis tool reveals that the top websites receiving traffic from the search term 'expedia' other than the Expedia website included ebookers.com, Holiday Hypermarket and lastminute.com during the four weeks ending 07/06/08. Expedia can use this tool to quantify the amount of traffic lost to competitors or affiliates bidding on its brand within search engines.
In light of Google's recent trademark changes, Hitwise clients can view our recent webinars on "Using Hitwise to Manage your Brand" and "The Impact of Google Trademark Changes" on Hitwise University.
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| Google receives 87 percent of UK and 68 percent of US searches in May 2008 |
Google search properties accounted for 87 percent of all UK searches for the four weeks ending 31 May 2008, increasing by 12 percent compared to May 2007. In comparison, Yahoo! search properties accounted for 4.09 percent of UK searches in May 2008, a 2 percent increase compared to April 2008. MSN search properties accounted for 3.72 percent and Ask search properties accounted for 3.07 percent of searches. MSN increased 2 percent compared to April 2008 and Ask increased 6 percent.
In the US, Google accounted for 68.29 percent of all US searches in May. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.95, 5.89 and 4.23 percent respectively. The remaining 41 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis tool accounted for 1.63 percent of US searches.
Search engines continue to be the primary way for Internet users to navigate key industries in the UK. Comparing May 2008 to May 2007, the Sports, Online Video and Social Networking & Forums industries showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from Google (10%, 25% and 32% respectively).
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| Traffic to the Facebook Developers website hits a new high |
UK Internet visits to the Facebook Developers website (developers.facebook.com) has reached its highest ever level since the website launched. 66% of visits to the site in May 2008 were from Facebook, while a further 12% were from the Microsoft search properties, Live.com and MSN UK Search. Facebook was the fourth most visited website in the UK during May, capturing one in every 43 visits.
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