Archive: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Back

HITWISE ENTERTAINMENT UPDATE

Hitchhiker’s Guide makes a stellar impact online

 

London, 29^th April 2005
British sci-fi fans have had an exciting few weeks – with last month’s premiere of the new Doctor Who series just behind us, the long-awaited film version of cult novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy hits our screens today – and the film has been making a stellar impact online in the build-up to its release. 

Search Terms data from Hitwise, global leader in real-time competitive intelligence, reveals that the term ‘hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’ is one of the top 40 terms sending traffic to sites in the Hitwise Entertainment – Movies category, with the film’s official website, hitchhikers.movies.go.com, almost tripling its traffic over the past six weeks. The site currently ranks at #59 in the Entertainment – Movies category, and is the third most popular official movie website.

Searches for ‘hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’ vs ‘star wars’, based on Search Terms data for four weeks ending February 19th – four weeks ending April 23rd.

But whilst the last and final instalment in the latest Star Wars trilogy is not due to hit cinema screens until May 19^th, traffic to the official Star Wars website is already outstripping its cult rivals. It is the number 1 official movie site in the UK this week, with searches for ‘star wars’ almost four times more frequent than searches for ‘hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’.

Hitwise rankings of the top 10 official movie sites reveal a distinct skew towards films in the sci-fi and fantasy genre, with epic adventure Kingdom of Heaven and sci-fi classic War of the Worlds ranked at #4 and #6 respectively, and long-standing favourites Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings also making an appearance in the top 10.

Hitwise Top 10 Official Movie sites
based on data for the week ending April 23^rd 2005

 

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.co.uk

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

Tel: 020 7378 3619