Gloomy Search Terms Drive Traffic To Websites

According to Compete.com gloomy search terms helped drive more traffic to web sites. eg Hotel Carter showed up in the list because of its number one ranking on Trip Advisor’s “Dirtiest Hotels”. The finding site that typically sporting events, celebrity gossip and big-budget marketing pushes caused spikes in various search term referrals, but gloomy search phrases top the list. The chart below shows the 25 high volume search terms that grew the most from April 2008 to May 2008.

• The most common theme among the top 25 searches is death (indicated by black bars). While this may help to explain why the news tend to focus on morbid events, it also speaks to the fact that people turn (heavily) to search engines when trying to find more info on contemporary events.


• Gossip and entertainment related searches also bubble to the top (purple bars), highlighted by both Kimberly Caldwell and David Cook (American Idol contestants and alleged lovebirds) showing making the list.


• Seasonal trends can be pretty dynamic (blue bars), with Mother’s day Idea’s and economic stylus related terms peppering the top 25 growers.


• Large product and movie launches caused spikes in movie and video game related terms (green bars) as The Strangers, The Happening, Sex in The City, GTA4 and Wii Fit all made the list. What’s interesting here is that movie terms seem to coincide with advertising while game related search terms are (apparently) related to usage.

Web Analytics Failing To Drive Decision Making

According to the Online Measurement and Strategy Report on web analytics companies are failing to adopt a coherent strategy that ties in web analytics data with business objectives. About 18 percent of the firms surveyed said they had a strategy, 22 percent said they didn’t have a strategy and 56 percent said they were “working on it”.

Lack of budget and resources were sited as the most widespread barrier to implementing an effective online measurement strategy. The most widespread use of web

analytics tools was for reporting traffic figures, with 88 percent saying that it was an “important use” of web analytics. Approximately 43 percent of organizations did not have any dedicated web analytics professionals. About 33 percent of respondents spend less than US$7,500 a year on web analytics and 21 percent spent at least US$75,000 a year. Two-thirds of the organizations surveyed used the free Google Analytics tool, which makes it far and away the most widely used web analytics tool.

Some 700 companies took part in the survey including 434 “client-side” respondents and 229 supplier-side companies (including agencies, consultancies and analytics vendors). Some 77% of company respondents and 74% of agency respondents are based in the UK. The rest are split between Europe (non-UK), North America (US or Canada) and other countries, including Australia, South Korea, India and Israel.

Internet Trends 2008

Morgan Stanley has made available their Internet Trends report for 2008. The 72 page report covers:
1) Usage Patterns
2) Social Networking
3) Widgetization
4) Measureability
5) Monetization
6) Facebook Apps
7) Online Ad Spend
8) Online Video
9) Mobile Outlook
10) Emerging Trends
11) Recession Impact

Click to view report on Internet Trends