HITWISE UK ENTERTAINMENT UPDATE

UKsearches for Michael Jackson soar as trial reaches conclusion

London, 14^th June 2005

Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports that UK searches for Michael Jackson soared as the star’s high profile trial reached its conclusion yesterday.

In the lead-up to the jury’s decision this week, millions of people across the globe were anxiously awaiting the outcome of Jackson’s case, and UK Internet users swamped online news sites and Jackson fan sites to get the latest updates.

For the week ending 11th June, online searches relating to Michael Jackson were at their highest level since the trial began on February 28^th: more than 1 in 9,000 searches were for the term ‘michael jackson’, a 29% increase on the term’s previous peak (for the week ending 12^th March). Searches for the second most popular Jackson-related term, ‘michael jackson trial’, also shot up, doubling their share of searches from June 4^th to June 11^th.

Unsurprisingly, most of the top downstream destinations for searches on ‘michael jackson’ were news sites. Google News (news.google.co.uk) was the top destination for people searching for ‘michael jackson’ with more than 10% of downstream traffic, while CNN, NBC, Reuters, BBC News and ABC News also featured in the top 10 downstream sites. Both Reuters and the Washington Post targeted Google AdWords advertising at searches for the term ‘michael jackson’, leveraging traffic from the intense online interest in the case.

Traffic to both the official Michael Jackson website and the plethora of Jackson fan sites also increased in the run up to the trial conclusion, with MichaelJackson.com and mjjsource.com (the ‘official source for Michael Jackson news and information’) both witnessing a surge in traffic over the past few days. 

Chart of visits to www.michaeljackson.com and www.mjjsource.com, week ending February 26^th – week ending 11^th June 2005