November 9, 2009 - Heather Dougherty, Research Director, Experian Hitwise

The holidays are almost upon us again, which means one thing - time to eat! Every year, the search term variations for 'recipe' and 'recipes' peak during the weeks of the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays. There are two major types of destinations for searches on recipes, naturally the websites specializing in recipes & food content, followed by the websites of CPGs. Search is the key driver of traffic for both recipes and CPGs. During the peak holiday weeks last year, the share of upstream traffic from search engines to recipe websites was 60% and 32% for CPG Food websites.



View the rest of Heather's blog post on the Google CPG Blog.

Hitwise Search Intelligence^TM data reveals the top websites from the complete list of websites that received traffic from the search term 'black friday.' The results are ordered based on the volume of traffic for the four weeks ending November 7, 2009.

Rank week ending - November 7, 2009 - 354
Rank week ending - October 31, 2009 - 633
Positions jumped - 279

The Movember website moved up 279 positions among all Community websites visited by U.S. Internet users (week ending November 7, 2009) to rank number 354 in the Community industry. Movember aims to decrease the number of preventable male deaths by raising funds and creating awareness about prostate cancer among males age 25 to 40. During the month of Movember (formerly known as November), supporters grow moustaches and raise contributions for the charity


Of the website's total traffic, 86 percent consisted of new visitors. The top websites visited before Movember were Movember United States, Blogger and AOL Love Match. The top websites visited after Movember were Movember United States and Facebook.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle reports allow you to grow visits from target customers by partnering with more websites that attract visitors who closely match your website's audience profile. You can also view websites that match the MOSAIC USA profile of your competitors in order to understand their existing and potential online strengths.

For example, if you are a retailer looking to increase your customer base and your competitor is Home Depot, using the Lifestyle Similarity report, you will discover that the top five websites that have the 'best fit' audience profiles to Home Depot are: Cooks.com, Biz Rate, Discover Card, MapQuest and Fixya.com (week ending November 7, 2009). Using this information, you may determine that Fixya.com offers content syndication opportunities for your website.

You can also use Lifestyle reports to reveal competitors that have a strong overlap with your audience profile. For example, Sam's Club has an online audience profile similar to Home Depot. These insights are invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product update further, please contact Hitwise Customer Support, or visit the Hitwise University and review the Hitwise Lifestyle Fact Sheet.

To learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle, view the Hitwise Lifestyle Fact Sheet.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle, which incorporates MOSAIC USA, a leading household segmentation system, you can identify the most popular sites in an industry that attract a specific segment. For example, the top three websites in the Health Insurance category that attracted the largest volume of women aged 25-44 in the "Suburban Optimists" segment were Kaiser Permanente, GroupHealth and CIGNA for the four weeks ending 11/07/09. The Suburban Optimists Type represents middle-class diversity with its high concentration of Asian, Hawaiian and white residents. These consumers tend to spend their disposable income on technology products, buying the latest laptops, video game players and home theater systems. They also describe themselves as early adopters and influential leaders when it comes to consumer electronics. Suburban Optimists frequently watch cable TV networks such as VH1, MTV and Spike TV. Finally, they enjoy watching comedies, network dramas and reality shows like "That 70s Show," "E.R." and "American Idol." Lifestyle data is available on over 30,000 websites.

To learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle, contact Hitwise.

November 16, 2009 - Heather Hopkins

Canada is home to one national airline (Air Canada), a major regional carrier (Westjet), a few low cost carriers and international competition on international routes. One might expect Canadians to head directly to AirCanada.com to make bookings, however, Hitwise data reveal that Canadians continue to compare deals across carriers, in particular using online travel agencies.

Among Travel websites, last week, Expedia.ca and Westjet ranked #1 and #2 in share of Canadian Internet visits. Air Canada and Westjet typically trade off for the #2 spot.



View the rest of this blog post.

Hot Products and Using Hitwise to Stay Focused This Holiday Season
December 9, 2009 at 1PM EST
As we head into the final weeks of the holiday selling season, learn the hot products being searched for and the websites that are best capitalizing on these searches.
Register for the webinar.

2009 Holiday Marketer: Benchmark & Trend Report - Experian Marketing Services
The report assesses the marketing landscape as it exists today and examines which activities are most likely to drive early and lasting holiday marketing success.
Download the report.

Holiday Content Planning
If your company publishes content about Halloween, Thanksgiving or the December holidays, you won't want to miss this webcast covering how to use Hitwise data to maximize your readership this season.
Watch the archived webcast.

Retail Planning for the Holiday Season The Holiday season will be here before you know it. Your retail competitors are already planning promotions and marketing initiatives to maximize traffic and sales. Use Hitwise to make sure your promotions, content, affiliate partnerships and search programs hit the mark with Holiday gift-givers.
Watch the archived webcast.