Hitwise UK Online

Media Round-up

March 2009
How to pick up traffic from social media sites

Robin Goad
Research Director, Hitwise UK

Lindsay O’Gorman
Marketing Executive, Hitwise UK
Introduction

Table of contents
Section 1: Industry overview........................................................................3
UK Internet visits to key media categories....................................................3
Fast moving search terms (February vs. January 2009)..................................3

Section 2: Fast movers .................................................................................4

Twitpic ....................................................................................................4
MSN Entertainment UK ..............................................................................4
Directgov ................................................................................................4
Comic Relief and Red Nose Day ..................................................................4

Section 3: Top Stories ..................................................................................5

Facebook the most searched-for brand in the UK...........................................5
Twitter enters top 100 sites; UK traffic has trebled already in 2009..................6
The Telegraph: how to pick up traffic from Digg ............................................7
The Sun and the Baby Father .....................................................................8
“Money Saving Expert” Martin Lewis the most searched-for personality .......... 10
What are we scared of? ........................................................................... 12

Section 4: Short Cuts..................................................................................13

Michael Jackson searches increase by 1200% ............................................. 13
Spotify traffic up 250% in a month............................................................ 13
Cinema traffic increases in lead up to the Oscars......................................... 13
UK Internet searches for Best Picture Nominees .......................................... 13

Section 5: Appendix ...................................................................................14

Further Reading ..................................................................................... 14
Click: What We Do Online and Why it Matters (book) ................................... 14
Hitwise UK Search Engine Behaviour Webinar (Webinar recording) ................ 14
About Hitwise......................................................................................... 14
Terms Used in this Report ........................................................................ 15
Disclaimer ............................................................................................. 15

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Section 1: Industry overview

Section 1: Industry overview

UK Internet visits to key media categories

Monthly Yearly
Category Feb-09 Jan-09 Feb-08
change Change
News and Media 6.12% 5.63% 8.7% 4.77% 28.3%
Community Directories and Guides 0.30% 0.24% 26.8% 0.30% 0.6%
Online Video 2.52% 2.53% -0.4% 1.90% 32.3%
Social Networking & Forums 9.80% 9.53% 2.9% 7.97% 23.0%
Print 1.82% 1.79% 1.7% 1.45% 25.3%
Blogs and personal websites 0.77% 0.75% 2.1% 0.94% -18.5%
*Based on market share of UK Internet visits within All Categories.

• The Print category continues to see an increase in traffic both monthly and
year-on-year. Dailymail.co.uk is the largest site in the category, but UK
internet traffic to thesun.co.uk reached an all time high on 13/2/09 following
its ‘Baby Father’ story, overtaking the Daily Mail for the first time since
September 08.
• Despite seeing the only monthly decrease in visits, the Online Video category
continues to experience the largest annual growth rate (32.3%). Within the
category, from January to February 09, video.msn.com moved up the
rankings from #10 to #5 with traffic to the site increasing by 62.8%.
• Community Directories and Guides category experienced the largest monthly
increase in traffic and has also started to increase on an annual basis.
Directories were the largest subject area searched for on uk.ask.com,
contributing to 15.9% of the top 1,500 generic searches for the 12 weeks
ending 3rd January.

Fast moving search terms (February vs. January 2009)

Community Directories and

Rank News and Media Print
Guides
1 rihanna rihanna oscars
2 jade goody wedding jade goody wedding shrovetide
3 chris brown chris brown pancake fillings
4 bbc hereford and worcester 13 year old dad american idol
5 school closures jade goody latest london weather
6 radio leicester oscars tmz rihanna
7 tmz alfie patten mardi gras
8 sky weather jade goody cancer ashbourne shrovetide
9 oscars gail trimble ellie paskell
10 jade goody latest 13 year old father heath ledger

Rank Social Networking and Forums Online Video (custom category) Blogs & Personal Websites

1 jade goody fitna chris brown

2 bebo mobile christian bale jade goody
3 watchmen christian bale rant ps3 fanboy
4 oscars bolt tf2
5 robert webb love story rihanna
6 spotify valentine's day christian bale
7 pancake recipe robert webb being human
8 google money system bolt trailer team fortress 2
9 kaskus charles darwin scout update
10 pancake mix how to make pancakes radio 2

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 31/1/09 and 28/2/09.

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Section 2: Fast movers
Section 2: Fast movers
Twitpic
Twitpic.com allows users to upload pictures to
their Twitter profiles, and is the number one
downstream website from the micro-blogging
service. The site ranked 7th in the
Photography category for the week ending
07/02/09, up from 26th the previous month.
Twitpic is still small in comparison to Flickr and
Photobucket, but is growing rapidly. UK
Internet traffic to the site has already
increased more than 5-fold during 2009.
Directgov
UK Internet traffic to direct.gov.uk, the official
UK government portal, has increased 32.8%
over the last month. The top 5 government
sites receiving traffic from Directgov during
February 09 were Jobcentre Plus, HM Revenue
& Customs, the DWP, the Department for
Transport and the DVLA.
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MSN Entertainment UK
Over the last 12 months traffic to MSN
Entertainment UK has almost doubled. In
February it was the 57th most visited website
overall and ranked 10th in the Entertainment
category (compared to Feb 08 when it was
21st). 40.4% of its traffic comes from MSN
UK, with Windows Live Mail (Hotmail)
contributing 16.5%.
Comic Relief and Red Nose Day
In the lead up to Comic Relief's Red Nose Day
09, UK traffic to its two sites has increased.
For the week ending 28/02/09, Red Nose Day
- Shop contributed the 3rd largest amount of
traffic (5.4%) to TK Maxx, the exclusive seller
of Stella McCartney's Red Nose Day t-shirt
range.
Section 3: Top Stories

Section 3: Top Stories

Facebook the most searched-for brand in the UK

Britain’s favourite social network and the second most visited website in the UK after
Google, Facebook is also the most searched-for brand by UK Internet users. During
the 12 weeks ending 3 January 2009, 1 in every 42 Internet searches in the UK
included the term ‘facebook’. Facebook received 52% more searches than the second
most popular brand, YouTube. The third most searched-for brand was the auction site
eBay, while social networking site Bebo ranked fourth. The BBC rounded out the top
5, and was also the most searched-for ‘offline’ brand during the 12 weeks ending
3/1/09.

10 most searched-for brands by UK Internet users (ranked by market share

of UK Internet searches, 12 weeks ending 3/1/09):

1. Facebook (2.39%)
2. YouTube (1.57%)
3. eBay (1.25%)
4. Bebo (0.96%)
5. BBC (0.86%)
6. Amazon (0.47%)
7. Argos (0.44%)
8. Sky (0.27%)
9. Tesco (0.26%)
10. Yahoo! (o.26%)

Facebook’s UK Internet traffic has more than doubled over the last year and it is now
the second most visited website in the UK after google.co.uk. The social network
accounted for 1 in every 24 UK Internet visits during the month of February and
traffic to the site has already increased by 18.6% during 2009.

Social networks now account for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits and 1 in every 5
page views. Only search engines receive more UK Internet visits than social
networks. During February 2009, social networks received 13.1% more UK Internet
visits than online retail websites, and 27.9% more than Adult websites, which they
overtook in September 2008.

Of the top five most searched-for brands in the UK, the BBC is the only brand not to
be Internet specific, and conducts the majority of its activities ‘offline’. Overall there
are 4 ‘offline’ brands in the top 10, with Argos ranking 7th, Sky 8th and Tesco 9th.
Six of the top 10 brands (Facebook, YouTube, Bebo, BBC, Sky, Yahoo!) are media
companies of one shape or another, and most of these rely primarily on advertising
to generate revenue. The list also reveals the importance of online video: YouTube is
the second most searched-for brand in the UK, while iPlayer is now the BBC’s third
most popular sub-brand online after News and Sport.

The remaining four brands are all online retailers: eBay, Amazon, Argos and Tesco.
eBay and Amazon remain the most popular online retail brands, but the more
traditional high street players are gaining on them all the time. During the key month
of December, the top 100 high street retailers received 68% more UK Internet visits
than their online-only rivals.

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Section 3: Top stories

Twitter enters top 100 sites; UK traffic has trebled already in 2009

For the week ending 07/02/09 Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites
in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st within All Categories, placing above online
heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy
(103) and MoneySupermarket (105). As the chart below illustrates, Twitter now
ranks as 7th within the Social Networking and Forums category, up from 23rd just 3
weeks ago.

There was a noticeable increase in visits to Twitter following the media attention
generated by the likes of Stephen Fry (owner of the world’s second favourite Twitter
feed after Barack Obama) and Jonathan Ross.

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Section 3: Top stories

Over the last 12 months traffic to Twitter.com has increased 27-fold. As Hitwise is
only measuring traffic to the Twitter website, if people accessing their Twitter
accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific,
Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers may even be higher.

The Telegraph: how to pick up traffic from Digg

The Telegraph’s Digg widget, located on the newspaper’s homepage, lists the most
‘dugg’ Telegraph stories, with links to their Digg entries.

Many (arguably most) news and media websites now include social bookmarking
buttons, which allow users to add their favourite stories to sites like Digg, Delicious,
Reddit, StumbleUpon and Facebook, but the Telegraph’s widget takes things a little
further. Given the high profile it has on the site, the Telegraph has become one of
Digg’s largest sources of traffic in the UK.

However, the real test of how successful the widget has been is to look at the amount
of traffic that Digg sends to the Telegraph. In addition to providing a version of the
‘most read stories’ section included on most news sites, the Digg widget also
encourages Telegraph readers to ‘digg’ their favourite stories. This in turn helps
Telegraph stories to move up the Digg rankings, meaning that more should reach the
front page. Looking at the Hitwise data, the strategy seems to have worked. As the
chart below illustrates, the amount of downstream traffic that Digg sends to the
Telegraph has increased significantly over the last 12 months.

The Telegraph has now overtaken the Daily Mail and BBC News to become the largest
UK recipient of traffic from Digg.

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Section 3: Top stories

The experience of the Telegraph shows that Digg‘s US-bias can be overcome, but
content sites need to actively encourage their readers to use the service in order to
achieve this. This strategy can also have an impact on international traffic too: for
the week ending 7/2/09, the Telegraph was also the second most visited News and
Media site after Digg in the US as well as the UK.

The Sun and the Baby Father

According to Journalism.co.uk, the Sun’s February 13th story about the 13 year old
‘baby father’ Alfie Patten became the newspaper’s most popular online article of all
time. As the chart below illustrates, the Sun’s market share of UK Internet visits to
the News and Media - Print category reached an all time high of 8.48% on 13/2/09,
overtaking the Daily Mail for the first time since September.

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Section 3: Top stories

After the story broke, people heard about it in other media and began to search for
more information. ‘13 year old dad’ was the sixth biggest search term sending traffic
to the Sun for the week ending 14/02/09, and the highest ranked non-branded term.
As the chart below illustrates, two more of the newspaper’s top 10 search terms last
week - ‘dad at 13’ and ’13 year old father’ – were also related to the story. The Sun
also backed this up with a paid search campaign, although most of the traffic came
from organic sources.

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Section 3: Top stories

The Sun experienced a significant increase in the amount of traffic it received as a

result of the story. As the chart below illustrates, on February 13th 1 in every 6 of
the newspaper’s visits came from a social networking site. The Sun received more
than twice as many visits from social network sites as any of its rivals. Facebook
accounted for almost half of these, while the social network site sending the fifth
largest amount of traffic to the Sun was Bounty, which describes itself as ‘the UK’s
favourite parenting club’.

“Money Saving Expert” Martin Lewis the most searched-for personality in

the UK

Martin Lewis, creator of the “consumer revenge” website Money Saving Expert was
the most searched-for personality by UK Internet users during the 12 weeks ending
3/1/09. There were 11% more searches for Martin Lewis than US President Barack
Obama, the second most searched-for personality over the period.

10 most searched-for personalities in the UK, 12 weeks ending 03/01/09

1. Martin Lewis
2. Barack Obama
3. Diana Vickers
4. Britney Spears
5. Leona Lewis
6. Cheryl Cole
7. Georgina Baillie
8. Miley Cyrus
9. Nicola Mclean
10. Katy Perry

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Section 3: Top stories

The combination of practical money saving advice, a popular website and frequent
appearances in the media made Martin Lewis the most searched-for personality in the
UK during the final three months of last year. During January 2009
www.moneysavingexpert.com was the 100th most visited website in the UK, while
the site’s forums (forums.moneysavingexpert.com) ranked as the 10th most popular
social networking site.

The then President-elect Barack Obama was the second most searched-for
personality by UK Internet users during the 12 weeks ending 3/1/09. However,
female celebrities from the worlds of TV and music account for most of the top 10.
One in seven non-branded UK Internet searches is for a TV program or personality,
while one in every 16 is music related.

The boost that the UK entertainment industry has received during the awards season
has also been reflected in the volume of US Internet searches for British musicians,
actors and films. All five of the nominees for Record of the Year at the Grammys were
British, and the award was eventually won by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss for their
song “Please Read the Letter”. Last week there was a 15-fold increase in the volume
of US searches for ‘robert plant’, while there were 7-fold increases for fellow
nominees M.I.A. and Adele (who won awards for Best New Artist and Best Female
Pop Vocal Performance). There was also a 3-fold increase in searches for ‘coldplay’,
winners of two Grammies for “Viva La Vida”.

American Internet users have also been searching for recent exports from the British
film industry. After winning a Golden Globe, US Internet searches for Oscar nominee
Winslet (who went on to win the Oscar for Best Actress) increased 8-fold. Slumdog
Millionaire - which also became a multi-Oscar winner - experienced a 3-fold increase
in US searches after it won the Golden Globe for best film.

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Section 3: Top stories

What are we scared of?

In the book “Click”, one of the topics that Bill Tancer discusses is using search data to
get an understanding of what people really think about a topic – as opposed to what
they tell researchers or friends. One example cited in the book is people’s fears.

According to a US study, the most frequently expressed fear is of bugs, mice, snakes
or bats. But looking at our search data, Bill found that the most searched for fear was
‘fear of flying’ – which did not appear in the survey top 10. Similarly, the highest
ranking animal fear according to the Hitwise data was ‘fear of snakes’ at number 8,
which appeared below the likes of heights, clowns, intimacy, death, rejection and
people.

For the 12 weeks ending 14/02/09, UK Internet users searched for over 8,500
distinct terms containing the phrase ‘fear of’. Below are the top 10:

1. fear of flying (2.27% of all ‘fear of’ searches)

2. fear of cats (1.72%)
3. irrational fear of cats (1.34%)
4. fear of clowns (1.10%)
5. fear of long words (1.01%)
6. fear of heights (0.86%)
7. fear of the dark (0.62%)
8. fear of death (0.61%)
9. fear of spiders (0.43%)
10. fear of crime (0.36%)

The most popular phrase is ‘fear of flying’ - as it was in the US - but the combined
volume for ‘fear of cats’ and ‘irrational fear of cats’ was higher. However, there are
over 500 variations on the term ‘fear of flying’, and once these are added together
they beat the 90 or so variations on the cat theme.

While looking into the ‘fear of’ searches, variations of ‘scared of’ were also
researched. Over the same 12 week period there were fewer variations on ‘scared of’
(3,000) than ‘fear of’ (8,500), but the results were similar. The top variation on
‘scared of’ was ‘scared of lonely lyrics’, which is a Beyonce song, while ‘scared of
flying’ was the second most popular.

One interesting term in the ‘scared of’ list was ‘I’m not scared of becky taylor’, which
ranked 10th out of over 3,000 variations on the term for the 12 weeks ending
14/02/09. This is a line from a current anti-smoking TV ad, and nicely illustrates how
search behaviour is influenced by other media. Interestingly none of that search
traffic is going to government of health related sites, implying that the campaign has
missed an opportunity in terms of paid search / SEO.

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Section 4: Short cuts

Section 4: Short Cuts

Michael Jackson searches increase by 1200%
Following Michael Jackson's recent announcement that he is to play 10 dates at the
O2 this summer, searches for the King of Pop increased by 1200%. With fans able to
register for presale tickets, traffic to www.michaeljackson.com increased 3-fold for
the week ending 07/03/09, while ‘michael Jackson tickets’ was the top search term
sending traffic to Ticket Exchange websites. With his comeback show predicted by
many to make show business history, it comes as no surprise that 'michael jackson'
was the 3rd fastest moving search term in the UK last week, behind 'v festival' (#1)
and 'dr seuss' (#2 after featuring in a Google Doodle) for the same period.

Spotify traffic up 250% in a month

UK Internet traffic to Spotify.com, the streaming music player offering legal and free
access to a huge library of music, has grown 250% in the 4 weeks ending 21/02/09.
Searches for 'spotify' are also on the rise, increasing 4-fold over the same period.
Looking at Experian Mosaic data, the type of people most likely to visit Spotify are
from the Urban Intelligence group - defined as “young, single and mostly well-
educated people who are cosmopolitan in tastes and liberal in attitudes”.

Cinema traffic increases in lead up to the Oscars

UK internet traffic to cinemas increased by 30% the week before the Oscars. Out of
all cinemas in the custom category, Apollo Cinemas experienced the largest spike in
traffic (53.57%) as the pre-Oscars buzz encouraged people to view the nominated
films.

UK Internet searches for Best Picture Nominees

In anticipation of the Oscar results for best picture of 2009, the most searched-for
nominee in the UK the week before the ceremony was Slumdog Millionaire. 'slumdog
millionaire' was also the top non-branded search term driving traffic to the popular
film directory website Internet Movie Database. During the same period IMDB was
the biggest recipient of traffic from all the nominee search terms, except 'benjamin
button', which sent 26% of its traffic to www.benjaminbutton.com.

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.

Click: What We Do Online and Why it Matters (book)

Written by Bill Tancer, the General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise, “Click”
provides a behind-the-scenes view of the daily analysis the Hitwise Research team
conducts into online behaviour. With a sample of over 25 million worldwide, insights
can be gleaned on the sites that we collectively visit, what we search for and what
that tells us about ourselves.

“Click” has just been published in the UK: http://hitwise.co.uk/other/click.php

Hitwise UK Search Engine Behaviour Webinar (Webinar recording)

Do UK consumers search differently depending on the search engine? Join Richard
Seymour, our Client Intelligence Analyst, as he looks at the top 5 UK search engines
and how consumers are using them.
Key topics covered in this online seminar include:
• How consumers search across the top 5 UK search engines, both in terms of
navigational and branded search;
• The most popular brands and subject areas for each search engine;
• Industries that benefit most from search and how they differ across the top 5
UK search engines;
• How paid rates differ across engine and subject areas.

View a recording of this webinar by visiting: http://hitwise.acrobat.com/p48934088/

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, 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
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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
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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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