Tropical Storms and the Katrina Effect

If you were to roll time back to the days before Hurricane Katrina, it would be a truly rare occurrence to see any "tropical storm" search terms in the top 1,000 overall search terms. Since Katrina's tragic devastation, search term...

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September 9, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Palin Most-Searched-For Political Figure

John McCain's decision to add Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket has resulted in unprecedented media coverage for the first female Republican VP nominee, but just how interested is the American public in the governor from Alaska? Search-term volume is...

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September 3, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (22)

Luxury Retail Heading for a Slump?

As reported here, luxury retailer stocks have been holding steady despite troubling economic news. Website visit data may provide us with some insight into what the future may hold for those same stocks. The chart below details year-over-year visits of...

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August 28, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Obama Antichrist: The Weird World of Political Searches

Having analyzed Internet search patterns for over five years now, I find that it's rare that I'm surprised by what we search for on our favorite search engine. This morning, I decided to check in on the top search terms...

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August 19, 2008 in politics | Permalink | User Comments (22)

McCain v. Obama: Searching for Our Next President

What can search terms tell us about the current state of the presidential race? Unfortunately, due to confounding reasons or "search missions" (i.e., a candidate search may be a sign of support or a mission to find negative information) are...

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August 13, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

Back-to-School: Online Holds Steady

Despite reports from retailers of expected declines in the back-to-school retail season, online data reveals that visits to office supply and school supply sites is holding steady when compared to previous year's visits. The chart below provides a three-year perspective...

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August 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Obama v. McCain: The Demographics

We have a new tool at Hitwise that allows us to take the demographics and psychographics of visitors to a website and then, based on the segmentation of visitors to that site across basic demographics (gender, age, income, region) and...

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August 6, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (10)

Post Tour - Dwindling U.S. Interest in Cycling

On the road this weekend grinding out my weekly 35 mile ride, I was reminiscing with one of my cycling buddies about the dwindling effect that the Tour de France has had on new bikes and cyclists hitting the road...

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August 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

Where is _____? The Internet Lost and Found

Along with finding lost Web sites, misplaced factoids and other pieces of forgotten information, some of us turn to search engines to discover where things are. From the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users, here are some of the...

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July 31, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

Housing Market - Have We Reached Bottom?

Last week's report on existing home sales by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), revealing a 2.6 percent decline from May, added to the pile of sobering news about the housing market and the economy. Here at Hitwise, we have...

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July 29, 2008 in economics | Permalink | User Comments (2)