The document provides an analysis of online media trends in the UK during August and September 2008. Some key findings include: - Sports websites saw a large increase in traffic due to success of UK athletes at the Beijing Olympics. BBC Sport was the top beneficiary. Cycling retailers and brands like Adidas that sponsored UK teams also saw gains. - Social media sites like Facebook continued growing, with Facebook overtaking eBay to become the third most visited UK website. 9 in 10 searches were for brands or sites like Facebook, YouTube, eBay and BBC. - During the Olympics, searches for sponsors like Adidas and brands worn by stars like Puma and Speedo's Michael Phelps swimsuits increased sharply around

1. Hitwise UK Online
Media Round-up
September 2008
Sport websites’ success not quite a bolt from the blue
Robin Goad
Research Director, Hitwise UK
Eva Stringleman
Research Analyst, Hitwise UK
Stephanie Oakes
Junior Research Analyst, Hitwise UK

2. Introduction
Table of contents
Section 1: Industry overview........................................................................3
UK Internet visits to key media categories....................................................3
Fast moving search terms* (August vs. July 2008) ........................................3
Section 2: Fast movers .................................................................................4
Friendsreunited.co.uk................................................................................4
Nola.com.................................................................................................4
Yougofurther.com .....................................................................................4
National Hurricane Centre ..........................................................................4
Section 3: Top stories ...................................................................................5
Facebook overtakes eBay to become third most visited website.......................5
9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded.............................................6
Olympics winners: sports sites, bike retailers and sportswear manufacturers.....8
Football: transfers and fantasy ................................................................. 10
Top band / artist searches in August.......................................................... 13
Section 4: Short Cuts..................................................................................15
Sarah Palin more popular than Barack Obama in the UK ............................... 15
Oasis number one website in Bands & Artists category ................................. 15
‘I kissed a girl’ top non-branded search for Youtube..................................... 15
Australians more interested in Olympics than British.................................... 15
Dragons Den appearances generate interest in products online ..................... 15
Section 5: Appendix ...................................................................................16
Further Reading ..................................................................................... 16
Managing Your Brand Online (Report) ........................................................ 16
Can You Have a Happy Christmas During an Economic Downturn? (Webinar
recording) ............................................................................................. 16
About Hitwise......................................................................................... 16
Terms Used in this Report ........................................................................ 17
Disclaimer ............................................................................................. 17
2

3. Section 1: Industry overview
Section 1: Industry overview
UK Internet visits to key media categories
Monthly Yearly
Category Aug-08 Jul-08 Aug-07
change Change
Social Networking and Forums 9.2% 8.9% 3.5% 7.0% 30.8%
News and Media 5.9% 5.7% 2.3% 4.8% 21.0%
Online Video 2.5% 2.4% 4.7% 1.1% 129.7%
Print 1.7% 1.8% -2.3% 1.4% 21.0%
Blogs and Personal Websites 0.8% 0.9% -12.3% 0.6% 21.9%
Community Directories and Guides 0.3% 0.3% 1.2% 0.3% -10.4%
*Based on market share of UK Internet visits within All Categories.
• Facebook has increased its domination of the Social Networking and Forums
market this month, capturing 30% of visits to the category, up from 27% of
visits in July. Facebook is now the second most visited site in the UK, recently
having overtaken eBay UK and Windows Live Mail.
• The Online Video category continues to grow, with a year-on-year increase in
visits of 129.7% since August 2007.
• Within News and Media the top 3 most visited websites in August were all BBC
sites (News, Homepage and Weather). Together they account for 37.8% of all
visits to the category.
Spotlight on News and Media: Weather websites proved very popular during a wet
August, with the BBC Weather website ranking 3rd and the Met Office ranking 4th
within the News and Media category. Interest in the weather normally peaks over
summer in the UK, but this August the weather category received more visits than
ever before. Search engines were the main source of traffic to weather websites, with
Google UK accounting for 23.7% of traffic during the 4 weeks ending 30/08/08. The
top weather related search terms driving traffic to the category were ‘bbc weather’
(17.7%) and ‘weather’ (9.5%).
Fast moving search terms* (August vs. July 2008)
Community Directories and
Rank News and Media Print
Guides
1 beijing 2008 olympic games gcse results tinsley towers
2 bbc olympics olympic medal table harry hotspur
3 olympics jade goody nottinghill carnival
4 jade goody tom daley kilnsey show
5 gcse results guardian fantasy football gooya
6 morgan freeman gcse results 2008 calcton gazette newspaper
7 bernie mac bernie mac tinsley cooling towers
8 olympic medal table beijing 2008 olympic games newcastle fc ic
9 tom daley morgan freeman beijing 2008 olympic games
10 strictly come dancing jade goody cancer thesentinel
Rank Social Networking and Forums Online Video (custom category) Blogs & Personal Websites
1 beijing 2008 olympic games beijing 2008 olympic games akaine
2 beijing 2008 usain bolt guillem balague
3 usain bolt disturbia beijing 2008 olympic games
4 leeds festival beijing 2008 I foods
5 olympics when I grow up cheatplanet
6 yougofurther olympics egotastic
7 ucas brum the perfect vagina
8 antivirus xp 2008 camel spider google earth street view
9 dubstep bernie mac bbc olympics
10 disturbia paddys revenge big foot
Colour key: Sport, Entertainment, Celebrity, News / Current Affairs
*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 2nd August 2008 and 30th August 2008.
3

4. Section 2: Fast movers
Section 2: Fast movers
Nola.com
Friendsreunited.co.uk
Friendsreunited.co.uk relaunched as a free
Nola.com, a New Orleans community website,
service in May 2008. As a result it has
increased its market share of visits in the
experienced a 140% increase in its market
‘News and Media-Community Directories and
share of visits in the Social Networking and
Guides’ category by 184% during August
Forums category. Thanks to an effective email
2008. This is most likely due to interest in
marketing campaign, the Email Services
Hurricane Gustav, which people initially
category has become one of the main drivers
feared would hit New Orleans in a repeat of
of traffic to friendsreunited.co.uk. Between
the Hurricane Katrina tragedy in August
April and August 2008 traffic from webmail
2005. The second highest driver of traffic to
services to the site increased by 218%.
nola.com was the National Hurricane Center.
Yougofurther.com National Hurricane Centre
Yougofurther.co.uk placed 52nd in the Social Visits to the National Hurricane Center tripled
Networking and Forums category during the over August 2008. The clickstream data for
week ending 30/08/08. The site enables the National Hurricane Centre reveals that
prospective university students to interact and search was the main driver of traffic to the
with current students. Hitwise data shows that website. The top ten search terms sending
visits to the site have increased by 40% since traffic to the site were all terms specific to
August 2007. The August spike reflects the National hurricane Center. The only
interest from prospective students who are exception was ‘hurricane gustav’, which
about to start university in the Autumn ranked as the 7th most popular term.
4

5. Section 3: Top stories
Section 3: Top stories
Facebook overtakes eBay to become third most visited
website
Facebook became the third most visited website in the UK during July, overtaking
eBay UK on the way. As the chart below illustrates, the social network received
2.75% of all UK Internet visits in July, equivalent to one in every 36. Facebook is also
closing the gap with Windows Live Mail (Hotmail), matching visits to Live Mail in
August.
There are however a couple of caveats here, the first of which relates to eBay UK.
Hitwise categorises both eBay.com and eBay Motors separately, although 26% of
people visiting the former end up at the UK site, while the latter currently receives
87% of its traffic from eBay UK. The second caveat relates to Windows Live Mail,
which hasn’t suddenly shot up the rankings as the graph implies. In fact, the webmail
service changed its URL structure last year and traffic to the new URL only
normalized from the start of this year.
Both Facebook and eBay are addictive sites with loyal fans, so we thought it would be
interesting to compare the two sites’ demographic profiles. Facebook visitors are
more likely to be female, are younger (it receives more visits from people aged
between 18 and 34), and are more likely to live in London and the South East.
Looking at the Experian Mosaic Lifestyle profiles for the 4 weeks ending 02/08/2008,
Facebook experiences a swing in its favour from three groups: Urban Intelligence (E -
‘Young, single and mostly well-educated, these people are cosmopolitan in tastes and
liberal in attitudes’), Symbols of Success (A – ‘People with rewarding careers who live
in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products’) and
Welfare Borderline (F – ‘People who are struggling to achieve rewards and are mostly
reliant on the council for accommodation and benefits’).
5

6. Section 3: Top stories
9 in 10 UK searches are navigational / branded
During May 2008, 88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were
navigational branded in nature, up from 81% in 2007 and 66% in 2005.
A quick refresher on the methodology that was used to create the above chart:
Hitwise carried out an analysis of the top 2,000 search terms in the UK over the same
12 week period ending in May during 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, categorizing them
into branded / navigational terms (e.g. ‘bebo’, ‘ebay’, ‘bbc’ – i.e. searches where
there was a clear intention to search for a brand or reach a particular website) and
non-navigational terms (e.g. ‘flights to spain’, ‘free games’, etc.). The trend towards
more navigational / branded search at the ‘head’ of search terms contrasts with more
sophisticated generic search behaviour in the long tail.
6

7. Section 3: Top stories
Consumers are using search engines to navigate to recognized websites, but what
are their favourite online brands? The table below lists the top 10 search terms in the
UK for the 4 weeks ending August 9th. Facebook, which continues to increase its
market share in the UK, is currently the most searched for brand in Britain. It is
joined in the top 10 by four other social networking / web 2.0 related terms: ‘bebo’,
‘youtube’, ‘you tube’ and ‘myspace’. Combining the two YouTube related search
terms the video sharing website would place higher than Bebo.
Of the five remaining terms, three belong to retailers – ‘ebay’, ‘argos’ and ‘amazon’ –
while the remaining two belong to the BBC. You will notice that the table above
includes paid and organic rates for each of these terms, a new feature that is now
included in Hitwise’s Search Intelligence tool. The terms ‘ebay’, ‘amazon’, ‘you tube’
(although noticeably not ‘youtube’) are the only three in the top 10 that generate a
significant proportion of paid search clicks, with the remaining seven relying almost
completely on organic traffic.
The table below lists the top 10 paid search terms (i.e. those that received the
largest number of paid clicks from a search engine) over the same period. By
stripping out the brands that rely primarily on organic search, this list is quite
different from the one above. A combination of high overall search volume and a high
paid rate pushes ‘ebay’ and ‘you tube’ to the top of the list, but Facebook, Bebo, the
BBC and MySpace all fall out of the top 10.
Whereas there were only 3 retailers in the previous list, this time there are 7 retail
related terms, with ‘ebay uk’, ‘currys’, ‘john lewis’, ‘pc world’ and ‘paypal’ entering
the paid search top 10. This makes sense when you consider the competitive nature
of the retail market. Previous Hitwise analysis showed that retailers increased their
rate of paid brand search to protect themselves from competitors and affiliates
following the Google trademark changes in May 2008.
7

8. Section 3: Top stories
Olympics winners: sports sites, bike retailers and
sportswear manufacturers
Following the success of Team GB in Beijing, we were curious to see who else
benefited from the Olympics hype. As the chart below illustrates, the most clear
online winners were sports websites, both news and retail sites. UK Internet traffic to
sites within our Sports category shot up to an all time high, and during the week
ending 23rd August accounted for one in every 29 visits.
The big winner during the Olympics was BBC Sport, which received one in every five
visits to a Sports site over August. During the week ending 13th August, the site
ranked as the 14th most visited in the UK, and on Saturday 13th August it entered the
top 10 for the first time. The ‘Live Action’ Olympics feed, which included both text
updates and video streaming via iPlayer, evidently helped keep people on the BBC
Sport site, with the average session time increasing to an all time high of 8 minutes
46 seconds. Finally, the stand alone BBC iPlayer site also reached a new high, ranking
as the 28th most visited site overall.
While our Shopping and Classifieds – Sports and Fitness category received less visits
than the overall sports category, it still reached a new peak during the Olympics, and
for the week ending August 23rd traffic was up 36% year-on-year. Looking at the top
sports retail websites during this week, it is perhaps no surprise to see that four of
the top 10 were cycling websites, including Halfords at number one. The success of
Chris Hoy et al obviously encouraged Brits to get in the saddle. As the chart below
illustrates, each of the top 4 cycling sites experienced increases in traffic over the
Olympic fortnight.
8

9. Section 3: Top stories
Another great example of TV exposure impacting sales was Adidas, the official Team
GB kit sponsor. As you can see from the chart below, searches for ‘adidas’ reached
their highest level of 2008 during the final week of the Olympics. For the 4 weeks
ending August 23rd, almost 80% of this traffic went to Adidas’s own sites. The largest
independent recipient of traffic was JD Sports, which received 5.7% of traffic from
‘adidas’ searches, although it paid for almost 90% of that traffic.
9

10. Section 3: Top stories
Two other sportswear manufacturers that also benefited by association were Puma
and Speedo. Puma sponsor the fastest man in the world, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt
and traffic to its site shot up thanks to its "Race Bolt” game. As you can see, the peak
happened on August 20th, the day he won gold in the 200m sprint, breaking the
world record in the process. The other big star of the games was the American
swimmer Michael Phelps, who wore a much talked about Speedo swimming suit.
However, unlike Puma, which experienced a sudden peak, UK traffic to the Speedo
website increased steadily over the Olympic fortnight as Phelps racked up one gold
medal after another.
Football: transfers and fantasy
Despite all in the interest in the Olympics over August, Football websites remained
the most popular sport sites in the UK, accounting for a third of visits to Hitwise’s
Sports category. As you can see from the chart below, by early August traffic had
already surpassed the mini summer peak caused by the European Championships. In
fact, the category received more visits than at any point last season, and looks like it
may soon surpass the highs of the 2006 World Cup / pre-season period.
10

11. Section 3: Top stories
The cause of this sudden spike in traffic was the commencement of pre-season
activity and all the foreign tours, friendlies and mini-tournaments that entailed.
Transfer activity was also a big contributor, and a summer full of rumours, press
coverage, announcements and ambiguous agent / player statements helped maintain
traffic levels. We took a list of all the major transfer targets this summer and whittled
them down to the ten most searched for, which are charted below.
Cristiano Ronaldo was hardly off the back pages all summer, so it’s not surprising to
see that he maintained the most consistent search performance over the summer
months. Searches for both David Villa and Andrei Arshavin shot up following star
performances at the Euros and the inevitable links with Premiership clubs that
followed. However, searches for both the Russian and the Spaniard soon dropped off
again once it become unlikely that they would be plying their trade in the England
this season. There was a peak in searches for Peter Crouch when he transferred from
Liverpool to Portsmouth, but it was Anfield new boy Robbie Keane who generated the
most searches in a single week following his transfer from Spurs.
11

12. Section 3: Top stories
The start of the new season also meant the now traditional surge in traffic to fantasy
football sites. As the chart below illustrates, the official Premier League site, the Sun’s
Dream Team and the Telegraph’s game are now firmly established as the leaders in
this field.
12

13. Section 3: Top stories
The fantasy football market is very competitive. However the new Hitwise search tool
- which now includes paid and organic search rates at an industry level – shows that
just 7.27% of search traffic to our Sports – Fantasy category (which is dominated by
football) comes from paid search. Looking at the top 10 search terms it is clear that
the newspaper-branded ones, including ‘telegraph fantasy football’, ‘sun dream team’
and ‘dream team’ all have much higher paid rates than their generic counterparts.
This is because a successful fantasy football game can drive a significant amount of
traffic to a newspaper’s site.
Top band/artist searches in August
Here are the top band / artist searches sending traffic to social networks and music
blogs during August. Starting with the social networks, Katy Perry, who topped the
British and American charts over the summer with her hit “I Kissed a Girl”, is at
number one. Biffy Clyro remains at 2, while a new album and successful Glastonbury
headline slot helped Kings of Leon enter the chart at number 3. Elsewhere Noah and
the Whale, Kid Rock and Slipknot have all moved up the charts.
1. Katy Perry (12)
2. Biffy Clyro (2)
3. Kings of Leon (New)
4. Noah and the Whale (6)
5. High School Musical (3)
6. Slipknot (10)
7. Kid Rock (8)
8. Metallica (New)
9. Rihanna (New)
10. Basshunter (1)
11. Jonas Brothers (7)
12. Jordin Sparks (4)
13. Mcfly (9)
14. You Me At Six (New)
15. Oasis (New)
16. Bloc Party (New)
17. Ting Tings (11)
18. Duffy (New)
19. Elliot Minor (New)
20. Gabriella Cilmi (5)
13

14. Section 3: Top stories
Comparing the blog chart with the social networking list, one thing that jumps out is
the high number of new entries on the former. Of the top 20 bands in the blog list,
17 are new entries compared with just 8 from the social networking chart. This blog
list contains more new bands/ artists, although they generally appear in the bottom
half. Looking at the similarities, there were 5 bands / artists that appeared on both
lists: Kings of Leon, Jonas Brothers, McFly, You Me At Six and Elliot Minor.
1. Kate Nash (15)
2. Keane (New)
3. Girls Aloud (New)
4. Ladyhawke (New)
5. Bloc Party (3)
6. Burial (New)
7. Doves (New)
8. Fighting with Wire (New)
9. Florence and the Machine (New)
10. Jonas Brothers (13)
11. Kings of Leon (New)
12. The Saturdays (New)
13. You Me At Six (New)
14. Bridget Metcalfe (New)
15. Chris Knight (New)
16. Craig Armstrong (New)
17. Elliot Minor (New)
18. Gary Glitter (New)
19. Kings of Leon (New)
20. McFly (New)
The blog list also contains two names whose appearance is less to do with their music
than their newsworthiness. Gary Glitter everyone knows about, but people may be
less familiar with Burial. He is the previously anonymous Mercury Music prize
nominated dubstep producer who recently revealed his identity via his MySpace page.
14

15. Section 4: Short cuts
Section 4: Short Cuts
Sarah Palin more popular than Barack Obama in the UK
UK searches for Sarah Palin were 45% higher during the week of her appointment
announcement as Republican vice-presidential candidate than those for the Democrat
presidential candidate Barack Obama. The top website capturing visits from searches
for Palin was Wikipedia (38% of searches), followed by Google News (4.5%).
Oasis number one website in Bands & Artists category
Visits to the official website for British band Oasis, www.oasisinet.com, increased
four-fold, over the two weeks from the 9th August to the 23rd August, as tickets sold
out for the band's recently announced tour. The website was number one in the
Bands & Artists category during the week ending 23rd August, followed by Metallica's
official website, www.metallica.com, as the metal band released the first song from
their upcoming album.
‘I kissed a girl’ top non-branded search for Youtube.
The top non-branded searches sending traffic to YouTube during August were 'i
kissed a girl', ‘usain bolt’, ‘katy perry’, ‘beijing 2008 olympic games’ and ‘uk top 40’.
Internet visits to the official website for Katy Perry, singer of the hit song “I Kissed a
Girl”, increased eight-fold. The website ranked at #20 within the Bands & Artists
category, up from #56 for the week ending 9th August. As well as traffic from Google,
the main drivers of visits to Perry's website were BBC Radio 1, Youtube and MySpace.
Australians more interested in Olympics than British
Using visits to the official Beijing Olympics site (en.beijing2008.com) as a measure of
online interest, Australians were more interested in the Olympics than people in the
UK. During the month of August the site - which was the largest recipient of searches
for ‘olympics’ in both countries - ranked 203rd in the UK vs. 63rd in Australia, where
its market share was 3 times higher than in the UK.
Dragons Den appearances generate interest in products online
Following its Dragons’ Den appearance, UK Internet visits to ifoods.tv pushed the
website to #24 in the Food and Beverage category, while visits to
www.diamondgeezer.com increased 28-fold. Websites for The Rapstrap and Buggy
Boot also gained a lot of interest online following their victorious Dragons' Den
appearances. Of the four sites, ifoods.tv has garnered the most interest following the
show.
For more in-depth analysis, subscribe to the Hitwise blog at
www.ilovedata.com
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
15

16. 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.
Managing Your Brand Online (Report)
Consumers look for brands they can identify with and trust online, whether they are
extensions of their favourite offline brands or new online players. This brand new
report from Hitwise and Experian Integrated Marketing analyses the role of online
brands in the UK from a number of perspectives, looking at the growth of branded
search, the relationship between online and offline branding, and the role of paid and
organic search marketing.
Can You Have a Happy Christmas During an Economic Downturn? (Webinar
recording)
Presented in partnership with Experian FootFall, this webinar covers the following
topics:
• A look back at what happened during Christmas 2007;
• What retailers can expect this Christmas in the face of an economic slowdown;
• Analysis on how pure-play online retailers are performing against multi-
channel retailers;
• FootFall insight into offline retail trends;
• Recommendations for Christmas 2008.
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.
16

17. 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
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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
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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.
17