Contact: James Borg, Marketing Director - Hitwise: +61 3 8530 2420

Australians Search Online For Green Solutions

Carbon, Energy, Efficiency and Water

MELBOURNE – 6 June 2007 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, uncovers Australian online search trends to reveal how the population is engaging with environmental issues.

Over 50% of searches containing the term 'carbon' visit Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) afterwards, 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 that wish to eliminate their carbon dioxide emissions.

Some of the most popular online searches conducted by Australian Internet users over the past 4 weeks containing the term 'carbon' demonstrate that carbon trading has emerged as a central environmental issue.

'carbon trading'

'carbon'

'carbon dioxide'

'carbon cycle'

'carbon neutral'

'carbon credits'

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.

There were 871 search variations successful at driving traffic to websites containing the term 'efficient' over the recent weeks. Since the only commercial website 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.

Australian Internet users are also becoming wiser when searching for energy. Solar energy is the most popular Australian 'energy-related' search term. The list below demonstrates that Australian Internet users are seeking more information about alternative energy and energy saving. The top non-branded searches conducted by Australian Internet users containing the term 'energy' are:

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.

The most popular 'water'-related search term used by Australian Internet users over the past 4 weeks was 'water tanks'. Searches for 'water tanks' increased by 1,200% between mid June 2006 and early January 2007. The websites that are benefiting most from water tank-related searches are Bushman Tanks - www.bushmantanks.com.au, BlueScope Water - www.bluescopewater.com.au and Irrigation Warehouse - www.irrigationwarehouse.com.au.

Hitwise Lifestyle data shows that the majority of visitors to the most popular water tank website 'Bushman Tanks' came from Mosaic Australia's consumer segment 'Rewarding Faculties'. This group are monied and accomplished stable families in mid to outer districts. Another group which make up a large proportion of visitors to this site are named 'Mainly Mining'. This group are young manual workers typically in remote locations.

On the other hand, online visitors to the Bluescope Water website are most likely to be from the Mosaic group 'Sea Change'– families focused on budget and lifestyle in regional growth areas. Visitors to Bluescope Water tend to come from the following suburbs: Port MacQuarie, Coffs Harbour, Torquay, Mount Martha, Robina and Buerim (Qld).

Visitors to the Irrigation Warehouse website (the third most popular website receiving visits from the search terms 'water tank') are predominantly from a Mosaic group called 'Raising Expectations'. These Internet users are best described as comfortable outer suburban families in affordable homes. These people generally reside in the following areas: Blaxland (NSW), Upwey (Vic), Mount Dandenong (Vic), Ferny Hills (Qld), Highbury (SA), Greenwood (WA).

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search, and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends and statistics, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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