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Young Adults the Fastest Growing Segment to the Official Social Security Website
Bush's electrified campaign to win support for his social security reform has moved the passionate debate to center stage. While different segments of the population are impacted in different ways, there is evidence that young adults are taking more of an interest than ever before.
According to Hitwise, young adults are the fastest growing audience segment visiting the official government Web site for the Social Security Administration (www.ssa.gov). The share of young adults aged 18-24 who frequent the site increased 104 percent when comparing the four weeks ending March 5, 2005 against the same week a year-ago (four weeks ending March 6, 2004). The 18-24 segment comprised only 5.3 percent of total visitors to www.ssa.gov, but now account for 10.7 percent.
The second fastest growing segment to the Social Security Administration's Web site is 25-34 year-olds. Their share of audience increased 59 percent (four weeks ending March 5, 2005 versus four weeks ending March 6, 2004); they comprised 12.8 percent last year, but now comprise 20.4 percent.
"The Social Security Administration's Web site historically has appealed to seniors, but now young adults age 18 to 34 comprise a full 31 percent of the site's total audience," said Bill Tancer, vice president of research, Hitwise. "It is unclear whether this massive demographic shift is a result of the social security reform debate, however we'll be watching closely to see how the pattern evolves over the remainder of the year."
'social security reform' Among Fastest Growing Search Terms
According to Hitwise Search Intelligence, "social security reform" is among the fastest growing search terms. While the level of searches for "social security reform" were below the Hitwise reporting threshold in the first half of 2004, the term had a significant debut during the politically-charged week of October 9, 2004, and subsequently skyrocketed 533 percent by the week ending February 19, 2005. The term "social security" has also become more popular lately; it jumped 40 percent over the same period.
For the four weeks ending March 5, 2005, the web sites that received the most visits from the search term "social security reform" were a combination of government, partisan and news sites, shown in the table below:
| Top 10 Domains that received traffic from the term 'social security reform'* | Share (%) |
|---|
| 1. | www.socialsecurityreform.org | 13.93 |
| 2. | www.whitehouse.gov | 12.30 |
| 3. | www.socialsecurity.org | 8.20 |
| 4. | www.sscommonsense.org | 5.74 |
| 5. | www.nasi.org | 4.92 |
| 6. | news.google.com | 4.10 |
| 7. | www.heritage.org | 3.28 |
| 8. | zfacts.com | 3.28 |
| 9. | money.cnn.com | 2.46 |
| 10. | www.americanprogress.org | 2.46 |
*Data Period – 4 weeks ending March 5, 2005
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Federated Positioned for Opportunity to Leverage the Regional Brands of May
With news reports about the merger between Federated Department Stores Inc. and May Department Stores focusing on the offline impact, Hitwise presents key data points and analysis illustrating the significance of the deal from an e-commerce perspective. In acquiring May, Federated has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage May's strong regional brands to strengthen the national brands of Macy's and other Federated stores online.
For the week ending Feb. 26, 2005, the market share of visits to Macys.com was 3.6 times greater than the combined market share of visits to the May department store retail sites (see table below for list of sites). Macys.com was ranked #1 in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds - Department Stores category for the week ending February 26, and has succeeded in building a strong brand online by linking its regional store sites, such as Burdines, Rich's and Lazarus to Macys.com. Having a central online store allows Federated to drive traffic to Macys.com by optimizing for search engine placement and purchasing search terms, rather than depending on brand familiarity and store promotions to drive traffic. The potential acquisition of May Company represents a unique opportunity for Federated to utilize the offline and online traffic to May Co. stores to strengthen the Macy's brand online.
In addition, geographic location of stores also presents an opportunity; visitors to the various May store sites are primarily from the states in which the stores are located. For example, for the 4 weeks ending Feb. 26, 2005, 92% of visitors to Foleys.com came from the states of Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Okalahoma and Louisiana; the same states in which the stores are located. Hitwise demographic analysis shows that for the four weeks ending February 19, 2005, visitors to Macys.com were 84 times more likely to live in an urban area than the total internet population. The rural skew of the May Co. stores will give Federated the opportunity to expand the geographic reach of Macys.com
| Store | Website | Market Share of visits
to May websites |
|---|
| 1. | Foley’s | www.foleys.com | 20.99% |
| 2. | Filene’s | www.filenes.com | 17.70% |
| 3. | Hecht’s | www.hechts.com | 16.17% |
| 4. | Robinsons May | www.robinsonsmay.com | 16.06% |
| 5. | Kaufmann’s | www.kaufmanns.com | 11.19% |
| 6. | Famous Barr | www.famousbarr.com | 5.49% |
| 7. | Strawbridges | www.strawbridges.com | 5.23% |
| 8. | Meier and Frank | www.meierandfrank.com | 3.47% |
| 9. | LS Ayres | www.lsayres.com | 2.49% |
| 10. | The Jones Store | www.thejonesstore.com | 1.21% |
*Note - excludes Lord & Taylor and Marshall Fields web sites, which do not provide e-commerce.
Fast Mover - Oscar.com
www.oscar.com
Rank February 12 - 82
Rank February 27 - 6
Positions jumped - 76
On February 27, the 77th Academy Awards were televised on ABC. On that day, the official web site for the Oscars (www.oscars.com) experienced an increase in market share of US visits of 1453 percent, climbing up the ranks among Movie web sites from number 82 (Feb. 12th, 2005) to number 6 (Feb. 27th, 2005). Oscars.com climbed to the number six position behind Yahoo Movies (movies.yahoo.com), The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and NetFlix (www.netflix.com). For the four weeks ending Feb 26, 2005, 57% of visitors to Oscar.com were female. They were representative of the online population in terms of age and income. Visitors to Oscar.com tended to come from urban areas; 27% of visitors came from urban social groups for the four weeks ending Feb. 26, compared to 18% of Internet visitors in that same time period.
Search Analysis – Search Term Suggestion Report
Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveal the most popular search terms resulting in visits to Accounting web sites for the 4 weeks ending March 12, 2005. The results are ordered based on the volume of searches.
Top 10 Search Terms Driving Traffic to Accountancy Web sites Period – Four Weeks Ending 3/12/05
| Generic | Volume |
|---|
| 1. | turbo tax | 5.86% |
| 2. | turbotax | 5.13% |
| 3. | irs | 3.15% |
| 4. | h&r block | 2.42% |
| 5. | turbotax.com | 2.14% |
| 6. | taxact | 1.74% |
| 7. | h & r block | 1.39% |
| 8. | irs.gov | 1.20% |
| 9. | taxes | 1.14% |
| 10. | tax reforms | 1.00% |
Keyword Breakdown of Search Terms that Delivered Traffic to 'Accountancy' Web sites. Period – Four Weeks Ending 3/12/05
| Words per key phrase | Percent |
|---|
| 1 word | 30.84% |
| 2 words | 27.05% |
| 3 words | 18.02% |
| 4 words | 13.04% |
| 5 words | 5.37% |
| 6 words | 2.60% |
| 7 words | 1.28% |
| 8+ words | 1.81% |
Category Spotlight: Automotive
The Automotive category features websites dedicated to automotive distributors, manufacturers, car dealerships, classifieds, maintenance, motor sport and motorcycles. The data below is based on weekly rankings for the week ending 03/12/2005, ranked by 'Visits'.
Case Study - Sales & Business Development
A leading comparison shopping site initially used Hitwise data to benchmark their performance against the competition, and to set goals for growth. However, once realizing the full potential of the Hitwise suite of tools, they integrated Hitwise data into many other aspects of their daily business initiatives, specifically, as a sales and business development tool.
The Hitwise "Ranking" tool provided the client with access to hundreds of thousands of potential clients, neatly categorized across 160 industries. "Ranking Alerts" and "Media Alerts" advised their sales staff on Internet market trends and website movements, as well as up-to-the-minute news on their prospects and clients. The Hitwise "Charting" and "Clickstream" tools assisted the sales staff in demonstrating their websites' potential as an online partner for any company using the Internet as a channel to market.
By providing this shopping comparison site with timely and accurate measurement tools, the client was able to uncover their unique position within their industry, identify new prospects, arm their sales staff with unique insight into a company's business, and use Hitwise data as an objective, third party validation of their work with clients.
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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, March 2005
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Hitwise United States Newsletter - March 2005
Real-time competitive intelligence