Later this week I'll be sharing some insights at the Australian Retail Symposium 2009 on how specific demographic segments search for retail brands and products. I've looked at searches by Australian households in our Hitwise Lifestyle segment, 'Young Ambition', who are early adopters of technology and are likely to research products over the Internet.

As you would expect, last week's budget received a lot of press attention. UK Internet searches for the term 'budget' increased 27-fold between the weeks ending April 18th and 25th. However, as the chart below illustrates, searches for the term only reached a similar level to last year and were actually down on two years ago. Following the online reaction to last year's pre-budget report I was also expecting a spike in searches for the term '50p tax',

My colleague in the US, Heather Hopkins recently covered the blaze of publicity around Oprah Winfrey starting to tweet and its immediate impact on Twitter's US share of visits. In Australia the influences seem to be broader than America's new 'tweetheart'. In Australia the growth of Twitter has been nothing short of phenomenal; • 49.9% growth in the past month )comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 22/03/2009( • 1067.3% since the start of the 2009 )comparing 21/04/2009 vs.