The big story that has grabbed people's attentions in the digital world this week is Facebook's announcement of a new video calling feature which will be powered by Skype. Looking at the Mosaic groups which visit Facebook and the Skype website we can see the new audience opportunities this partnership offers both parties. For Skype,

This weekend is Father's Day and in the run up to the celebratory day on Sunday, search term behaviour has revolved around, dates, gift ideas and cards. What becomes immediately apparent when looking at the search data for the last four weeks ending 11 June is the number of search terms relating to the actual date of Father's Day. Three of the top 10 search terms were variations of the question: when is Father's Day?

Scottish Power was the first of the major utility companies to raise its average gas and electricity bills last week in response to the increasing costs of wholesale gas price. Other providers are likely to follow suit, which in turn is likely to send consumers searching online for new deals to get the cheapest energy bills online.

Today )Thursday 5 May( polling stations have opened across the UK to decide whether to change the electoral system from first-past-the-post )FPTP( to the alternative vote )AV( system, under which voters rank candidates in order of preference. The majority of online searches relating to AV in the last four weeks have been very generic, with UK Internet users mostly searching for 'alternative vote' )17% of all search clicks( or 'av' )13% of all search clicks(.

Ever since we started looking at the most popular destinations by flight searches back in July 2010, New York has consistently been the number one place that UK Internet users want to visit. However, since the inception of the top 50 destinations list, 'flights to australia' has always been the single biggest flight-related search term every quarter. That trend changed for the first time in the April quarter,

Ni Hao! It's an exciting day for us here at Experian Hitwise as today we officially launched Hitwise China . This is the 11th market that we are bringing web analytics and competitive intelligence to, and given China's extraordinary economic growth over the last couple of years, one of the most exciting markets to measure online.

The deadline for UK applicants to order tickets for the London 2012 Olympics was supposed to pass at midnight last night )26 April( but such was the overwhelming demand for tickets that the organisers were forced to extend the deadline by an extra hour to accommodate the surge in visits to the official ticket website. Monitoring traffic to the London 2012 Tickets website, we saw that visits increased by 146% in a single day.

The weather has got noticeably nicer in the UK over the past couple of weeks. The days are lighter, the sun is shining and the first BBQs have been enjoyed. Online, the first optimistic signs of summer are usually greeted with a spike in searches for three products: garden furniture, barbecues and lawn mowers. You can see from the chart above that in the last month there has been a significant uplift in searches for these three summer products. In particular,

As the current financial year comes to a close and FY12 begins on 6 April, consumers are searching for ISAs in order to make the most of their tax free savings. Searches for ISAs have increased by 185% in the last four weeks, although they have some way to go in order to match last year's peak in April 2010. Generic searches for ISAs including 'best isa rates' and 'best cash isa' are generally twice as popular as branded searches for 'nationwide isa' etc.

In the last week the Internet has been buzzing with talk of Rebecca Black. Like her or hate her, Rebecca Black's pop song Friday is a YouTube sensation which is quickly heading towards 100 million views and has become one of the most talked about topics within the blogosphere.

Ticketing is one of the most dynamic categories we monitor online as every week there are always new trends of search terms as the UK Internet population seek information about upcoming gigs, festivals, musicals and comedy acts. I've written previous blogs on how the Ticketing category acts as an excellent barometer of the hottest entertainment acts in the UK, but a surprise entry this week was for 'sally morgan',

With Comic Relief just around the corner next month the charity sector is picking itself up after the busy Christmas period. However, although the Comic Relief website has been increasing its market share of visits to the charity sector in the last few weeks, the fastest climber last week was ChildLine. Between the week ending 5 February 2011 and 12 February 2011, visits to the ChildLine website have increased by an incredible 900%.

The devastating events unfolding in Japan in the wake of the biggest earthquake recorded in the country's history has been dominating news headlines since the earthquake struck Sendai on Friday 11 March. Unsurprisingly, UK Internet users have been searching for news online about the quake and the following tsunami, causing an unprecedented volume of traffic for all search terms relating to Japan.

Yesterday supermarket chain Morrisons announced that it had bought baby products group Kiddicare for £70 million. The acquisition is an exciting development for Morrisons who can leverage Kiddicare's digital platform to increase online sales and market presence. Currently Morrisons is the sixth most popular online grocery website in the UK. In January 2011 the Morrisons website accounted for 5.49% of all UK Internet visits to the Grocery and Alcohol category.

Online fashion retailer ASOS announced yesterday that it would be opening a Facebook store at the end of January, allowing users to buy items directly from the social network rather than having to click through to the ASOS homepage. ASOS gets a lot of its traffic from social media sites. In December our Social Networks and Forums category was the third biggest source of traffic to the retailer's website, accounting for 14.62% of all traffic to ASOS.com.

With Christmas over and the New Year in full swing it's time for us to reflect on Christmas 2010 and the key trends in retail this year. The two biggest factors which affected online retail this Christmas were the December snow falls and the January VAT increase. With consumers squeezed on both sides of Christmas, the period between 25 December 2010 and 4 January 2011 was the busiest post-Christmas shopping frenzy we've ever seen online.

Over the last few days the UK Internet population have been prolific online, in one of the busiest post-Christmas periods ever. Boxing Day was the busiest day of the year for online retailers again this year, but the sales have continued to perform ahead of last year's figures with 27 December being the second biggest online retail day of 2010. Post Christmas visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category have been significantly better this season than in previous years,

Earlier this week Experian revealed the real Middle Britain to bring sharp classification to what has previously been an overused and woolly term. Using Experian's consumer segmentation tool Mosaic, some 13.1 million people were identified as Middle Britain in the UK. At Hitwise we frequently use Mosaic classifications to show what type of websites are preferred by the different segments of society. What is Middle Britain like online?

UK Internet visits to retail websites increased by 32% between Christmas Eve )December 24th( and Christmas Day )December 25th(. With IMRG reporting that 4.8m British consumers spent £153m online yesterday , the real winners were the multichannel retailers. As the table below illustrates, eBay UK and Amazon UK were the most visited online retailers in the UK yesterday, while Apple iTunes was in fifth position as grateful recipients plugged in their new iPads,

The X Factor final this weekend is one of the most hotly talked about topics up and down the country and it seems everyone has an opinion on who is going to win this year's competition. Last year we correctly predicted that Joe McElderry would win the competition, this year the data suggests boyband One Direction will emerge as winners. Looking at all searches over the last 12 weeks for the final four contestants, the clear favourite would appear to be Cher,