This post was written by Tim on September 24, 2008
Went to www.hitwise.com.au to see how my new blog site was doing in the ranking, haven’t made the Top 20 yet folks, whats the story!! Come on tell your friends, email my link, subscribe, make a comment, I’m feeling lonely here.
Anyway when I got over the disappointment I found some interesting stuff on the Hitwise Analysts Blog that relates to us here in FMCG land and the job world as well. Robin Goad – Research Director, Hitwise UK, is responsible for the two articles that interested me the most. Has the credit crunch killed ethical consumerism? follows the Hitwise philosophy that
“search behaviour is a great way of tracking consumer behaviour”
The article looks at the search results for 4 term portfolios that Robin believes gives a good cross section of the ethical consumer. Interestingly only one of these; the “Efficiency” (e.g. ‘loft insulation’, ‘underfloor heating’) portfolio has shown any increase over the past 12 months. The other portfolios have all declined, Carbon/Environment (e.g. ‘co2 emissions’, ‘hybrid cars’), Fair Trade (e.g. ‘fair trade clothing’, ‘charity shops’) and Organic Terms (e.g. ‘organic vegetables’, ‘riverford organic’). Maybe charity does begin at home.
The other article relates to a subject close to all our hearts, Job Searches. Google Docs benefits from growth in job searches looks at where the action is from the increase in interest in employment/unemployment due to the economic turmoil we are currently experiencing. He is analysing the UK data for traffic on the Business and Finance – Employment and Training websites. We see in the result a very large unseasonal increase in traffic against the usual downward trend from this time of the year leading into Christmas.
The other interesting factoid he picks up on is the traffic from the search term “CV”. An obvious term as we all rush to update our Resume and have the latest and greatest template to impress the recruiters. Just don’t put your picture in it is all I can say – seems to be becoming a scary trend.
Anyway back to the article, it seems Google Docs and Spreadsheets is picking up nearly 20% of the traffic from this search term. With traffic increasing by over 150% over last year this has become a very popular destination.
This site is well worth keeping an eye on and other Analysts from other regions have good insights as well.
Tim.
Stumble it!
Posted under Marketing
Loading ...