Hitwise UK Online

Media Round-up

July 2009
Online Vouchers, Michael Jackson and Twitter

Robin Goad
Research Director, Hitwise UK

Lindsay O’Gorman
Marketing Executive, Hitwise UK

Haddon Mossley
Marketing Intern, Hitwise UK
Introduction

Table of contents

Section 1: Industry overview ............................................................. 3

UK Internet visits to key media categories....................................................3
Fast moving search terms (June vs. May 2009).............................................3
Section 2: Fast movers ....................................................................... 4
Michael Jackson and Twitter .......................................................................4
Apple iPhone 3G S vs Nokia N97 .................................................................4
Facebook usernames: record traffic levels ....................................................4
Sky Arts and the Fourth Plinth ....................................................................4
Section 3: Top Stories ........................................................................ 5
Twitter sending traffic to online media sites, but not online retailers.................5
Are online discount vouchers on the decline? ................................................7
Local Internet data: Liverpool example ...................................................... 10
Revision searches and BBC Bitesize ........................................................... 12
Sims 3 and the dangers of torrent searches................................................ 14
Section 4: Short Cuts........................................................................ 16
Iran searches and Twitter ........................................................................ 16
Searching to stay cool ............................................................................. 16
Section 5: Appendix ......................................................................... 17
Further Reading ..................................................................................... 17
Hitwise UK Webinar: How to Maximise Twitter ............................................ 17
Experian Insight Report: The Post-Recession Landscape ............................... 17
About Hitwise......................................................................................... 17
Terms Used in this Report ........................................................................ 18
Disclaimer ............................................................................................. 18

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Section 1: Industry overview

Section 1: Industry overview

UK Internet visits to key media categories

*Based on market share of UK Internet visits within All Categories.

 Despite losing ground from May 2009, the Online Video category experienced
the largest positive yearly growth (33.3%) during June 09. The category saw
a 19% increase in traffic over the two days between 25/06/09 and 27/06/09,
following the death of Michael Jackson.
 The Social Networking and Forums category continues to increase its share of
overall UK Internet visits, reaching a three year high of 10.2% during June.
Twitter had a 24.6% monthly growth, the largest increase within the top five
Social Networking sites.
 Blogging sites received a monthly increase in traffic of 5.0%. The LA Times
blog (latimesblogs.latimes.com) received a 41.6% increase in UK visitors
during June 09.

Fast moving search terms (June vs. May 2009)

Colour key: Sport, Entertainment, Celebrity, News / Current Affairs, Internet/ Technology

*Based on the search terms sending traffic to each category that experienced the largest relative increase
in market share of searches between the 4 weeks ending 30th May 2009 and 27th June 2009.

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Section 2: Fast movers
Section 2: Fast movers
Michael Jackson and Twitter
Following the tragic death of Michael Jackson,
UK Internet visits to his homepage increased
17-fold, making it the 9th most visited Music
website in the UK, and the highest ranked
artist homepage. The subject dominated
conversations on Twitter, as the micro-
blogging service had its busiest ever day in
the UK (25/06/09).
Facebook usernames: record traffic levels
Facebook experienced its busiest day in the
UK on 14/06/09, following the launch of its
new personalised username capability. It was
the second busiest website in the UK, picking
up 1 in every 19 UK Internet visits. The site
accounted for 43.3% of all UK Internet visits
to the Social Networking and Forums category.
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Apple iPhone 3G S vs Nokia N97
The Hitwise UK’s Hot Consumer Electronics
List tracked online activity in the build up to
the launch of both the Apple iPhone and
Nokia N97 on June 19. By the week ending
June 13, the Apple iPhone was the most
searched for phone by UK Internet users,
accounting for 1 in every 4 mobile phone
searches. The Nokia N97 was second with
3.6% of phone searches.
Sky Arts and the Fourth Plinth
One & Other, the website that is streaming
live webcam footage from Antony Gormley's
art installation on Trafalgar Square’s fourth
plinth, became the 698th most popular
website in the UK following its launch. The
event is being sponsored by Sky Arts, which
received 12.5% of One & Other’s downstream
traffic. As a result the Sky Arts homepage
had its busiest ever day on 06/07/09.
Section 3: Top Stories

Section 3: Top Stories

Twitter sending traffic to online media sites, but not online retailers

UK Internet traffic to Twitter, the “micro-blogging” service and social network, has
increased 22-fold over the last 12 months, becoming the fastest growing major
website in the UK. During May 2009 www.twitter.com ranked as the 38th most
visited website in the UK and the fifth most visited social network (during May 2008 it
was the 969th most visited website and 84th most visited social network).

The noticeable thing about Twitter’s growth is that the vast majority of it – 93% in
fact – has occurred during 2009. However, it is also important to point out that
Hitwise only measures traffic to the Twitter homepage and not hits via third party
applications such as Tweetdeck or Twitterrific. Given that some people claim that
these exceed the direct hits via the website, it is also fair to say that actual Twitter
usage is higher than Hitwise numbers imply.

One consequence of its phenomenal growth is that Twitter has become a key source
of traffic to other websites. During May 2009, Twitter was the 30th biggest source of
traffic for other sites in the UK, accounting for 1 in every 350 visits to a typical
website. Over half of this traffic (55.9%) is sent to other content-driven online media
sites, such as social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites.
However, only 9.5% of Twitter’s downstream traffic is sent to transactional websites
(i.e. travel, business and finance sites and online retailers). By contrast, Google UK
sends 30.7% and Facebook 14.7%, of its traffic to transactional sites.

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Section 3: Top stories

Twitter has proven to be a fantastic source of traffic for content driven sites and
media companies with a strong presence on the service are using it to great effect.
However, with one or two exceptions (most notably Dell, which claims to have
generated $3m via Twitter), very few transactional websites have yet to use Twitter
to drive sales. During May 2009, Google UK sent 365 times more traffic to
transactional websites than Twitter. Given that Twitter has yet to settle on a business
model that will take advantage of its huge, loyal user base, this is an issue that needs
to be addressed by the people who run the company if they are to make the service a
financial as well as popular success.

The third party website that has benefited most from Twitter’s success is Twitpic, a
service which allows users to upload photos and pictures to their Twitter profiles. The
site was the biggest recipient of UK traffic from Twitter during May 2009, picking up 1
in every 13 downstream visits from the social network. UK Internet visits to Twitpic
have increased 250 fold over the last 12 months, and it is now the third most popular
photo website in the UK behind Flickr and Photobucket.

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Section 3: Top stories

Smaller blogs and technology sites were amongst the first to benefit from Twitter, but
mainstream media websites in the UK were quick to follow their lead. Twitter was the
27th biggest source of traffic to News and Media – Print websites in the UK during
May 2009, and all of the main newspaper websites now have multiple Twitter feeds.

The key to having a successful Twitter presence is to engage the community. Twitter
is a great viral marketing channel, and for many users the aim is to have their story
‘retweeted’ – i.e. passed on by other users – as many times as possible. Although all
of the newspapers have multiple ‘official’ feeds, these tend to be bland and have very
low ‘retweet’ rates. Where journalists themselves are ‘tweeting’ and engaging with
the Twitter community, they typically have more success in creating viral stories.

Are online discount vouchers on the decline?

The use of online vouchers has been one of the most recent online success stories.
Voucher searches shot up massively in the run up to Christmas 2008 as savvy
shoppers looked to find a bargain during the recession. But recently there has been
talk that the boom times for discount vouchers may be coming to an end. This begs
the question: are consumers and retailers tiring of discount vouchers? To test this
hypothesis, the chart below illustrates the volume of UK Internet searches for the
term ‘vouchers’ over the last two years.

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Section 3: Top stories

As may be expected, there has been a significant decline since Christmas 2008 and
searches for ‘vouchers’ were also down 28.6% the week ending 27/06/09 (on the
equivalent week last year, 28/06/08). This does not necessarily mean that voucher
searches are down as the above chart only includes searches for the single term
‘vouchers’. Over 96% of UK searches containing the word ‘vouchers’ are for a longer
terms (e.g. ‘discount vouchers’, ‘tesco vouchers’, etc.) rather than just the single
word ‘vouchers’, so it is important to consider the broader picture.

The chart below tracks the breadth of searches for the term ‘vouchers’ – i.e. the
number of search terms in the UK that contained the term ‘voucher’. The breadth of
searches for ‘voucher’ has also declined since Christmas 2008, but in this case it is
still up year-on-year. This data points to an increasingly sophisticated voucher-
searching audience. Now that people are used to looking for vouchers online, they
are searching for specific discounts rather than more generic terms. Certainly, the
rate of increase in voucher searches has flattened – it is now starting to look more
like a mature than a growing market.

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Section 3: Top stories

The final piece of the puzzle is to look at traffic to voucher specific websites (such as
Hot UK Deals, Money Saving Expert and My Voucher Codes). As the chart below
illustrates, this has flattened since Christmas and is actually down 12.1% on last
year. However, from the retailers’ perspective, voucher sites are sending more traffic
now than a year ago. During May 2009, the top voucher websites accounted for
0.53% of all upstream traffic to the Shopping and Classifieds industry. This was down
from the peak of 0.82% during December 2008, but up from 0.43% in May 2008.

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Section 3: Top stories
In conclusion: the online voucher market is still huge and voucher sites are sending a
significant amount of traffic to retailers. However, the market is maturing fast and is
no longer growing at the rate it once was.

Local Internet data: Liverpool example

The Digital Editors Network forum, organized by the University of Central Lancashire
(UCLAN) in May 2009, highlighted the importance of local Internet usage and search
data. They emphasized that it is not only important for local media companies, but
also classifieds sites (i.e. jobs, property, motors, etc.) and retailers (any
website/business taking time to localize their products, services, content or
marketing).

Hitwise has been developing reporting capabilities in order to provide richer localized
online data. Our current product provides online usage information on a regional
basis (for example by UK region - such as North West or South East - and state in the
US), but Hitwise now has the capability in the UK to drill down to postcode area (i.e.
the letters in the first half of the postcode, such as SE for South East London, or G for
Glasgow). This enables visibility into how Internet usage, including search, varies
across the 124 different postcode areas in the UK.

As an example, Hitwise carried out some analysis of UK Internet usage in Liverpool /

Merseyside (all postcodes starting with L) during March 2009. Looking at the online
categories visited by the sample, general Internet patterns in Merseyside were similar
to UK population as a whole – Entertainment was the most popular category, followed
by Search Engines and Social Networks, but differences did appear. Perhaps
unsurprisingly given the popularity of the local football teams, people from
Merseyside were 32% more likely to visits Sports sites, for example.

The top 1,000 websites in Merseyside accounted for just under two thirds of all visits
in the area during March 2009. Of the traffic to the top 1,000 sites, 3.2% of visits
went to what is defined as ‘local’ sites (see the table below for the top 20). The most
popular categories of local sites were Education (which accounted for 28.8% of all
Merseyside visits to local sites), Sport (27.4%) and News and Media (14.6%).

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Section 3: Top stories

A couple of conclusions can be made from the table above. The first is that the
Liverpool FC homepage received 44% more visits from Merseyside than the Everton
FC homepage. However, the latter over-indexes more on Merseyside - implying that
Everton’s support is much more ‘localized’ than their rivals. The same is true of the
fan sites, with Red and White Kop just beating ToffeeWeb.

The other interesting thing was the Liverpool Echo's position. It was the fourth most
visited newspaper websites in Merseyside during March 2009, whereas on a national
level is ranked 83rd. Only the Daily Mail, Guardian and Times received more visits
from Merseyside. ‘liverpool echo’ was also the most popular local search term on
Merseyside, ranking 23rd overall. Second and third positions went to ‘liverpool’
(43rd) and ‘everton’ (52nd).

Of the top 1,000 search terms in Merseyside during March, 83 were local. These
accounted for 5.5% search volume, greater than the 3.2% of traffic that went to local
sites. A good proportion of people searching for local content (e.g. ‘jobs merseyside’,
‘sefton council’, ‘liverpool one odeon’ – all of which appeared in the top 1,000
Merseyside search terms during March) are ending up on national rather than local
sites. This implies that there is a great opportunity for local content providers in the
UK to close this gap by gaining a better understanding of their audience – something
they can now do with the new Hitwise local data.

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Section 3: Top stories

Revision searches and BBC Bitesize

One of the fastest moving websites for the week ending 06/06/09 was BBC Schools,
which experienced a 40% increase in traffic to become the 106th most visited
website in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, this spike was not the first time
traffic to the site has increased in 2009. Traffic to BBC Schools peaked during the
week ending 16/05/09, when it ranked 94th in the UK.

The reason for the seasonal increase in traffic (something similar happens every
year) was the occurrence of exam season for British secondary school pupils. The top
five search terms sending traffic to the site referred to Bitesize, the brand name of
the BBC’s revision guides. The brand has become so popular that there were 100
times more searches for the term ‘bitesize’ than ‘revision’ over the same period.

That’s not to say that no one was making revision searches, just that the stand alone
term ‘revision’ is not particularly popular. In fact there were over 65,000 variations
on the term ‘revision’ searched for in the UK during the 12 weeks ending 06/06/09.
As the chart below illustrates, the breadth of searches for the term – i.e. the number
of different terms containing the word ‘revision’ – increased very much in line with
traffic to BBC Schools.

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Section 3: Top stories

Looking at the top revision related searches, subject-specific revision searches are
the most popular, with Maths topping the list. Science and Biology also made it into
the top 10, while GCSEs were more popular than SATs and A-levels.

Top 10 UK searches containing the phrase ‘revision’, 12 weeks ending

06/06/09:

1. ‘maths revision’ (1.86% of all searches containing ‘revision’)

2. ‘bitesize revision’ (1.82%)
3. ‘revision’ (1.33%)
4. ‘science revision’ (0.96%)
5. ‘bbc bitesize revision’ (0.94%)
6. ‘gcse revision’ (0.82%)
7. ‘bbc revision’ (0.66%)
8. ‘gcse maths revision’ (0.61%)
9. ‘sats revision’ (0.57%)
10. ‘biology revision’ (0.49%)

To identify other sites picking up revision traffic, a portfolio of the top 100 revision-
related searches was created. excluding those that mentioned the BBC or Bitesize. As
the list below illustrates, BBC Schools still picked up the most generic traffic, but it
does not dominate the market.

Top 10 websites receiving traffic from generic revision searches, 12 weeks

ending 06/06/09:

1. BBC Schools (26.8% of traffic from searches)

2. S-Cool! (11.9%)
3. MathsRevision.net (7.7%)
4. Woodlands Junior School (3.4%)
5. Facebook (2.4%)
6. Revision Centre (2.4%)

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Section 3: Top stories
7. SchoolHistory.co.uk (2.1%)
8. www.revisionworld.co.uk (1.9%)
9. The Student Room (1.8%)
10. GCSE Answers (1.2%)

Sims 3 and the dangers of torrent searches

The delayed launch of the Sims 3, which was first showcased in March 2008 for a
February release date, has received several surges in online search. Once it was
announced to be released on June 2, 2009, supportive fans spent time surfing the
Internet to discover further information.

Even though interest in the game started building before Christmas 2008, searches
for the title did not reach March 2008 levels until February 2009. As the table below
illustrates, search terms such as ‘sims 3 release date’, ‘the sims 3 release date’ and
‘when is the sims 3 coming out’ were amongst the most searched for terms back in
March 2008, showing Sims fans eagerness to find out when the game would be
released.

In February 2009, after further delays were announced, an additional 200 terms had
been added to the list, including ‘sims 3 release’, but also ‘sims 3 torrent’ and ‘sims3
delayed’.

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Section 3: Top stories

The search volume for The Sims 3 terms dropped off rapidly until the week ending
23/05/09 when there was 142% surge in searches, thus The Sims 3 became the
most searched for video game in Hitwise UK’s Hot Consumer Electronics List. This
surge was mainly due to rumours flooding the internet about the game being leaked
to torrent sites. Approximately 1 in 12 searches during this week related to the
leaked game, including ‘sims 3 leaked’, ‘the sims 3 torrent’, ‘sims 3 download’, ‘sims
3 leak’, ‘the sims 3 leaked’, and ‘the sims 3 download’.

A further 31% increase in searches during the week ending 30/05/09, only a week
before the launch, was nearly 3 times that of its previous peaks in March 2008 and
February 2009.

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Section 4: Short cuts

Section 4: Short Cuts

Iran searches and Twitter

Given the current political situation in Iran, there were more searches for the country
during the week ending 20/06/09 than for Iraq, Dubai or Israel (generally the most
searched for countries in the Middle East) at any point over the last three years. For
the week ending 20/06/09 there were 2,600 UK Internet searches containing the
word ‘iran’.

Top 10 UK Internet searches containing the word ‘iran’:

1. iran (18.5% of searches for terms containing ‘iran’)

2. iran news (5.7%)
3. iran election (1.5%)
4. iran elections (1.3%)
5. iran tv (1.3%)
6. twitter iran (1.2%)
7. iran protests (1.1%)
8. bbc iran (0.9%)
9. iran elections 2009 (0.7%)
10. iran twitter (0.6%)

The top searches referred to the elections and subsequent protests. The presence of
two Twitter-related terms illustrates the amount of chatter related to the subject that
is still taking place on the micro blogging service.

Searching to stay cool

Following the heat wave Britain experienced during the week ending 04/07/09,
Internet users turned to the web in order to find ways to keep cool. The fastest
moving search term sending traffic to the Shopping and Classifieds category was
‘paddling pools’. This was joined in the list of 15 fastest moving retail search terms by
‘swimming pools’ (3rd), ‘air conditioning units’ (4th), ‘air conditioning’ (7th), ‘fans’
(8th), ‘air conditioner’ (12th) and ‘birkenstock shoes, (15th).

For more in-depth analysis, subscribe to the Hitwise UK blog at:

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/

Keep up to date with real time data by following Hitwise on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/Hitwise_UK

For further information, please contact your Hitwise account manager or

email: support.uk@hitwise.com

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Section 5: Appendix

Section 5: Appendix
Further Reading
To receive a copy of these or any other Hitwise research reports, please contact your
account manager or email support.uk@hitwise.com.

Hitwise UK Webinar: How to Maximise Twitter

This recorded webinar, hosted by Robin Goad, Hitwise UK Research Director and very
own Twitter expert, looks at the Twitter phenomenon and how it is driving the future
of social media in the UK. To view this recording, enter your details below to find out
how you could be maximising Twitter in your own business today.

Listen to the webinar recording here:

http://www.hitwise.co.uk/registration-page/uk-twitter-webinar-june.php

Experian Insight Report: The Post-Recession Landscape

How is the recession shaping and changing the UK's business and consumer
landscape? How can businesses prepare for success in the new world, post-recession?
There's much talk about potential economic recovery, but whether the UK is yet on
this road remains to be seen.

This latest Insight report from Experian focuses on how consumer and business
landscapes may look when we come out of the current downturn, and how businesses
can prepare for survival.

Download your copy at:

http://www.experian.co.uk/www/pages/what_we_offer/insight-report-form.html

About Hitwise
Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its
1,500 clients around the world 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
behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage
data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to
help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing
programs.
Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in
the United States, Canada, 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, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst
Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at
www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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Section 5: Appendix

Terms Used in this Report

Hitwise provides clients with various metrics for analyzing competitive activity. The
definitions of metrics used by Hitwise are:

User Visit: A series of one or more page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive
minutes of inactivity.

Market Share: The percentage of all visits or page requests to a particular online
market sector that is received by the individual website.

Clickstream: Provides an indication of the upstream and downstream traffic to and

from a website. Upstream sites are those sites visited immediately prior to visiting
the current site. Downstream sites are those visited immediately after leaving the
current site.
Fast Moving Search Terms: Search terms which are sending traffic to a category
that experienced the largest relative increase in market share of searches between
two periods of time.
Mosaic UK: Mosaic UK is a socio-cultural classification of the UK population that has
been developed by Experian to describe and group the population on the basis of the
proven principle that individuals with similar interests, lifestyles, profiles and
behaviour cluster closely together. Mosaic UK™ classifies all UK households and
neighbourhoods into 11 Mosaic Groups and 61 Mosaic Types. The classification
specifies both a Mosaic Group and Type for each of the 1.7 million postcodes in the
UK. The type assigned is the one that most closely describes the characteristics of
those households and the individuals living there.

Disclaimer
Some of the data presented in this report is based on custom data sets built for the
purpose of this report and not available in the syndicated Hitwise service. This
research report may contain names, information, data, links to third party website
addresses, and other materials belonging to third parties; including textual references
to such items. Any and all such uses are for illustrative purposes only and do not
necessarily indicate an endorsement of the opinions, products or services provided by
those third parties. Hitwise does not claim any proprietary right in, or to, any such
items as may qualify as copyrights, trademarks or other proprietary marks of third
parties.
Hitwise is not responsible for the content of third party websites, or the manner in
which information may be collected on that website and used by the third party.
Hitwise disclaims any responsibility towards the visitor of a third party website or any
third party for any direct, indirect or incidental reliance, consequential or punitive
damages, including without limitation lost profits, expenses or revenue; regardless of
whether Hitwise knew, or ought to have known, of the possibility of any loss or
damage arising from the use of, or visit to, a third party’s website.
Use of this research report is at your own and sole risk. Hitwise disclaims any and all
warranties or representations in respect of the accuracy or usefulness of information,
or any observations that may be derived from such information, obtained from
Hitwise.

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