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.

Thanksgiving is only a few days away and aspiring chefs are hungrily searching online for holiday recipes. Searches for Thanksgiving and turkey recipes traditionally peak the week of Thanksgiving, indicating that recipe searchers procrastinate and wait until the last minute before planning their feast. Traffic during the 2011 holiday season shows that searches on "Thanksgiving .

This week we released our quarterly Hot Shops List in association with IMRG which saw Apple become the second biggest online retailer in the UK for the first time ever. Since its inception in 2006 the top of the Hot Shops List has been dominated by Amazon UK and Argos. A number of retailers have .

Black Friday is almost upon us and the outlook is looking good for a positive start to the holiday season. The NRF predicts that 152 million people will shop over Black Friday weekend, up 10% from last year - a conservative estimate based upon the actual 212 million shoppers that actually appeared in retail stores. .

Yesterday )5 December(, millions of consumers went online for Cyber Monday to do their Christmas shopping. We predicted last week that there would be 85 million visits to online retail websites on Cyber Monday and yesterday we monitored 84.6 million visits, 18% up on last year's figure of 72 million visits. In total, 14 million hours were spent shopping online by UK Internet users yesterday, spending an average of 10 minutes per visit to each retail website.

It's December and as people crack open the first windows on their Advent calendars we thought we would make some predictions for Christmas 2011. In true festive fashion we've plumped for the 12 Insights of Christmas, and not a gold ring or partridge in sight. The 12 Insights of Christmas 2011 1. This December 350 million hours will be spent shopping online by the UK Internet population.

We're quite excited here in the Hitwise office and not just because it's nearly Christmas. We're always looking to improve our core product and make the data we supply accessible and easy to understand. We have some really exciting developments in the pipeline which are going to change the look and feel of Hitwise dramatically, but today I wanted to introduce our new Dashboards 2.0 product.

As the Occupy movement passed its two month anniversary last week, Occupy-related sites )e.g occupywallstreet.org ( experienced a resurgence in market share of visits. The initial peak in searches for variations of "occupy" and traffic to Occupy-related sites occurred in the first two weeks of October, as web-users sought general information about Occupy protests, the movement's demands and associated celebrities.

Today we released the twelfth issue of the Experian Hitwise Financial Services Quarterly report, which looks at the top online trends in the finance and insurance markets. It's amazing to think that the report is three years old, and to highlight some of the insight that the report provides our clients every quarter I've dug out some of the findings from the Motor Insurance section. Motor insurance is by far the biggest type of insurance that is searched for online,

The Experian Hitwise quarterly Automotive review is now three issues old! The report takes into account the latest trends in manufacturers, dealerships, classifieds and motor insurance online. This quarter KIA was the fastest mover in our Automotive Brand Index thanks to the launch of the new KIA Rio.

Earlier this week Zoopla and Digital Property Group announced a merger which will bring together the collective online strength of Zoopla, FindaProperty and Primelocation. The deal will create a new consolidated force in the online property market to take on Rightmove. Currently Rightmove is the lone dominant brand in the online property space, accounting for almost 29% of all visits to property websites from UK Internet users. FindaProperty,

As the 2012 automotive models continue to roll out throughout 2011, consumers in the market for a new vehicle are increasingly searching online for automotive makes and models. Online users have increased their share of overall vehicle make and model searches by 37% for the 4 weeks sending October 8, 2011 as compared to the same time frame 2 years ago.

On October 4th 2011 Apple announced the addition of the iPhone 4S to its product line which will be available to customers on October 12th. This was likely to the dismay of web users who have been anxiously awaiting Apple to announce that it would be releasing the iPhone 5 instead of an upgrade to the current iPhone. In advance of this much-anticipated announcement,

For members of the " Facebook Generation ", Facebook has become the de facto conduit for communication when something important occurs in our lives. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg revealed further design upgrades at the annual f8 Conference, including " Timeline ", which will be a form of digital biography of our lives and encourages users to see Facebook as a digital home. In the past,

The NFL lockout may have shortened the normal buildup to the NFL season, but once it ended online traffic to NFL-related sites saw a boost. As a result US visits to Fantasy Football sites increased 24% in August 2011 versus August 2010. Through last week US visits to Fantasy Football sites were up 28% compared to the same week in 2010 and visits to Fantasy Football sites are the highest they have been in three years.

ABC's Bachelor franchise, which consists of The Bachelor , The Bachelorette , and Bachelor Pad , has become a popular topic in gossip magazines, news & entertainment shows and on various websites. Web traffic data from Hitwise shows that in the 12 rolling weeks ending August 20th, three of the top ten search terms driving traffic to ABC.go.com included variations of "the bachelorette" which coincided with the most recent season. Traffic to ABC.go.

With kids going back to school next week parents have been searching and shopping online to get their children clothed and equipped for the new term. Looking at all searches for back to school terms last week, the indications are that this year will be a record breaking year for online sales in this period.

After three nights of unrest in London and other cities, the UK Internet population has been tracking the progress of the London riots by visiting News and Media sites and Twitter. The News and Media category saw its highest spike in visits so far this year, with a 14% increase in UK Internet visits between Monday 7 August and Tuesday 8 August. Within the News and Media category, the BBC has been the biggest recipient of traffic,