HITWISE UK COMMUNITY UPDATE

LIVE 8 fever online as competition deadline approaches

London, 9th June 2005
Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports that online anticipation for London’s LIVE 8 concert has reached a fever pitch this week in the lead-up to the global charity event.

Tickets for the free star-studded gig can only be won by entering a raffle via text message or mail, and so far more than two million people have sent text messages hoping to win one of 150,000 tickets. As competition lines opened on Monday the official LIVE 8 website was inundated with traffic. The site, www.live8live.com, leapt to #1 in the online Humanitarian sector with a  colossal 33% market share on Monday 6th June. On the same day, the site also reached #3 amongst online Music sites and achieved an overall ranking of #195 amongst all websites tracked by Hitwise, claiming more than 0.04% of all UK traffic.

With the deadline for postal competition entries closing today, the site has dropped to #2 in the Humanitarian category with just over 10% market share.

Hitwise Search Intelligence also reveals that searches for ‘live 8’ have soared. For the four weeks ending June 4th, ‘live 8’ claimed 0.022% of all UK web searches – a ten-fold increase on the previous week –  and was the 24th most searched for term driving traffic to Humanitarian sites.

According to Hitwise Lifestyle data, the LIVE 8 website indexes most highly with the Urban Intelligence groups University Challenge (students) and Caring Professionals (young professionals working in the public sector) as well as the Symbols of Success group ‘Cultural Leadership’, well-off professionals living in exclusive suburbs.

Chart of searches for ‘live 8’, four weeks ending May 7^th – four weeks ending 4^th June 2005.