Hitwise Intelligence - Analyst Weblogs

This week sees the release of Experian AudienceView – an exciting new product we’ve launched which will allow businesses to gain unparalleled insight and understanding about their customers.

Experian AudienceView allows you to define an audience by virtually any characteristic and then see the online behaviours of that anonymous audience, including the websites they visit, what search terms they type into Google, how they move around the web - the list goes on and on.

Using this tool you have the capabilities to view your bespoke audience dynamically over time, and watch how key trends and major events affect your customers. You can then alter you marketing strategy to adjust to changes in economic climate, or react quickly to threats from an emerging competitor.

The beauty about AudienceView is that there are limitless permutations of audiences you can create depending on how niche a segment you want to find out more about. We’ve put together just ten examples of audiences you could explore specifically in the automotive industry.

Let’s take the audience of new car buyers as an example. We can isolate this niche audience by observing people’s intent to buy a new car through search. An anonymous audience is created of people who made a search on one or more of over 250,000 unique search term variations driving traffic to automotive manufacturer websites that included the word ‘new’ a small selection of which have been included in the word cloud below.

So what can we learn about this audience of new car buyers? Perhaps most importantly, this group are heavily engaged with automotive websites, and in fact new car buyers are more than twice as likely to visit a manufacturer’s website as the general online population.

By observing the key audience trends we can see that new car buyers are also sports fanatics and are 10% more likely to visit sports websites than the average Internet user but they are less likely to use email as a communication channel so this is not a great avenue to reach this niche audience. New car buyers love German brands, especially BMW and Audi but are less enamoured with French cars from Renault, Peugeot and Citroen. Because of their familiarity with the industry, new car buyers also search differently than average consumers, and are much more likely to search for specific models and dash systems than broader generic brand searches.

These insights and observations just scratch the surface of what is possible with AudienceView. This is a state of the art segmentation tool which allows clients to know their audiences like never before. We will be running webinar sessions on AudienceView in the coming weeks to further highlight the capabilities of the tool.

Stay tuned on Twitter and YouTube or visit the AudienceView page for more information.

This weekend the UK will celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. With the added bonus of two bank holidays on Monday and Tuesday and the arrival of some glorious summer weather it’s no wonder people are getting ready for a party.

In the last 12 weeks we’ve seen over 65,000 unique search term variations including the word ‘jubilee’ typed into search engines by the UK population. The word cloud below highlights some of the top recurring terms which people are using with their Jubilee-related search queries.

You can see that the top recurring terms are mostly around celebrations, holidays and the Jubilee concert. Interestingly although it is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this weekend there were still a lot of searches for ‘golden’ and ‘silver’ either because people weren’t sure which anniversary it was or because they wanted to find out additional information about previous Jubilees.

Excluding the information based searches around the Jubilee, the celebration comes down to three core propositions: tickets, cake and bunting. Looking at all searches for Jubilee-related items tickets accounted for 24% of those searches, cake 17% and bunting 14%. Highlighting the top 10 individual search terms you can see that the most popular item overall was Jubilee bunting which accounted for almost 6% of all Jubilee item searches in the 12 weeks ending 26 May.

Bunting is quite a seasonal item which is only really used in the summer for special occasions like a wedding or events like the Jubilee. Our data shows that bunting has never been more popular online in the run up to the Jubilee, receiving 3% more searches this year than last year around the Royal Wedding.

And never one to miss a trick, the top recipient of traffic for this fast-moving item is Amazon UK. When we looked at the downstream traffic for websites receiving traffic from the term ‘jubilee bunting’ Amazon UK received almost 20% of search clicks, although it invested a lot in paid search to be the top recipient for this term.

This is another great example of being able to jump on emerging search trends and by isolating the key terms, benefiting from a lot of traffic from popular seasonal items. What is encouraging is that a website can emerge from nowhere like www.jubileebunting.com and still compete with the likes of Amazon, eBay and M&S even with no PPC budget. Effective search engine optimisation at its best.

Who are the people most interested in the Jubilee? By analysing the visitors to the Diamond Jubilee website we can see the type of people who have an interest in this weekend’s festivities beyond the fact that it is two days off work. These are the people who are more likely to buy Jubilee related products. Regionally London is the epicentre of Jubilee interest with London Internet users 30% more likely than the rest of the population to visit the Jubilee website. Scotland is the least interest region being 47% less likely than the average user to visit the website.
Using Mosaic we can also isolate the key demographic groups that visited the Jubilee site. You can see here that its Britain’s most affluent groups – Alpha Territory, Professional Rewards and Careers and Kids that are most interested in the Jubilee.

What other lessons can we learn from the Jubilee weekend? One of the key trends that we see every bank holiday weekend within retail is that people start searching for store opening times over the weekend ahead of bank holiday Monday. This is even more crucial over the Jubilee weekend as both Monday and Tuesday are bank holidays and people want to know when stores are open for them to shop. The message here is make your store opening times clearly visible on your website so that customers can find what they are looking for over the bank holiday weekend.

To find out more about Hitwise visit the website or follow us on Twitter.

With the Facebook IPO imminent, interest has surged in the world’s most popular social network. Here are the top 10 things you need to know about Facebook:

1. There are over 1.3 billion visits to Facebook a month from the UK Internet population – making Facebook the second most visited website in the UK after Google.

2. 1 in every 7 page views in the UK is to a Facebook page. The social network accounted for 14% of all UK Internet page views in April 2012.

3. 500 million hours are spent on Facebook in the UK every month. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook is 22 minutes.

4. Facebook is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for 50% of all visits to social networks. Facebook is twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.

5. Facebook receives an average of 40 million UK Internet visits every single day.

6. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).

7. Facebook is the second biggest source of traffic in the UK after Google. 7% of all visits to a website came from Facebook in April 2012.

8. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.

9. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment website, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.

10. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

With the Facebook IPO imminent, interest has surged in the world’s most popular social network. Here are the top 10 things you need to know about Facebook:

1. There are over 1.3 billion visits to Facebook a month from the UK Internet population – making Facebook the second most visited website in the UK after Google.

2. 1 in every 7 page views in the UK is to a Facebook page. The social network accounted for 14% of all UK Internet page views in April 2012.

3. 500 million hours are spent on Facebook in the UK every month. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook is 22 minutes.

4. Facebook is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for 50% of all visits to social networks. Facebook is twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.

5. Facebook receives an average of 40 million UK Internet visits every single day.

6. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).

7. Facebook is the second biggest source of traffic in the UK after Google. 7% of all visits to a website came from Facebook in April 2012.

8. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.

9. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment website, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.

10. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

With the Facebook IPO imminent, interest has surged in the world’s most popular social network. Here are the top 10 things you need to know about Facebook:

1. There are over 1.3 billion visits to Facebook a month from the UK Internet population – making Facebook the second most visited website in the UK after Google.


2. 1 in every 7 page views in the UK is to a Facebook page. The social network accounted for 14% of all UK Internet page views in April 2012.


3. 500 million hours are spent on Facebook in the UK every month. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook is 22 minutes.


4. Facebook is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for 50% of all visits to social networks. Facebook is twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.
   
5. Facebook receives an average of 40 million UK Internet visits every single day.


6. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).


7. Facebook is the second biggest source of traffic in the UK after Google. 7% of all visits to a website came from Facebook in April 2012.


8. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.


9. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment website, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.


10. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.



Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

With the Facebook IPO imminent, interest has surged in the world’s most popular social network. Here are the top 10 things you need to know about Facebook:

1. There are over 1.3 billion visits to Facebook a month from the UK Internet population – making Facebook the second most visited website in the UK after Google.

2. 1 in every 7 page views in the UK is to a Facebook page. The social network accounted for 14% of all UK Internet page views in April 2012.

3. 500 million hours are spent on Facebook in the UK every month. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook is 22 minutes.

4. Facebook is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for 50% of all visits to social networks. Facebook is twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.

5. Facebook receives an average of 40 million UK Internet visits every single day.

6. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).

7. Facebook is the second biggest source of traffic in the UK after Google. 7% of all visits to a website came from Facebook in April 2012.

8. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.

9. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment website, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.

10. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

This week Facebook announced the $1 billion acquisition of photo sharing app Instagram. This is a landmark deal for the acquisition of an app but Instagram became the 10th most visited social network in the UK in March 2012, showing the increasing appetite for photo sharing online.

Instagram received almost 13 million UK Internet visits in March 2012, a massive increase from the 300,000 visits it received in March 2011. During the last year Instagram has increased traffic to its website 43-fold. In the US Instagram received 3.8 million visits in a week, which my colleague Heather commented on in her blog.

In the last month alone Instagram has increased UK Internet visits by 44%, a growth which saw the site jump from 12th place to 10th in the social rankings between February and March. 12 months ago Instagram was barely scraping into the top 1,000 social networks, so it has come a long way in a very short period of time.

So where is all this traffic coming from? Using clickstream data we can see that Instagram relies on Facebook as its biggest source of traffic, with nearly 1 in every 5 visits coming to Instagram coming from Facebook in March 2012.

What’s interesting here is not just the amount of traffic Instagram receives from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, but also the prominence of other photo sharing sites like yfrog and TwitPic. What this indicates is that people who like sharing photos do so through multiple platforms and that there is definitely room in this industry for more than one dominant player (currently Flickr with 24 million UK Internet visits in March 2012).

In the last 12 months, Instagram has come to rely less on social networks as a source of traffic and more on Entertainment sites (including other photo sharing sites) and search.

From the graph above you can see that traffic from social networks has fallen from 56.7% of all visits to 39.5% year-on-year. On the other hand visits from the Entertainment category and from search engines have doubled.

Future investments in tech start ups

The acquisition of Instagram has already prompted speculation about which tech start ups will be next on the investors’ list. From the list below highlighted in The Guardian the two companies that are head and shoulders above the rest are Tumblr and Stumble Upon.

Visits to Tumblr have doubled in the last 12 months, whereas visits to Stumble Upon have tripled since March 2011. The fast moving asset of this small group however is Pinterest, which I blogged about last month. Pinterest has increased UK Internet visits 100-fold in the last 12 months, and had its biggest ever month of traffic in March with nearly 5 million visits.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter.

Yesterday, Facebook announced the acquisition of Instagram, a popular photo sharing network with over 30 million users, for $1 billion. Visits to the Instagram website have steadily increased over the past 24 weeks and reached 3.8 million last week, up from 68,800 visits for the week ending October 22, 2012. While the majority of activity takes place within the Instagram application, the website provides links to the Apple App Store and Google Play as well as some account management tools, so the growth marks increased consumer interest.

The audience for Instagram is relatively young, with over half of the visitors to the Instagram website are under the age of 35. This is an interesting contrast to the visitors of Facebook’s website, which reflects a more mainstream audience with a higher share of older users. These differences can certainly offer opportunities to promote and grow usage of each of the networks across age groups.

Many users of Instagram share their photos across a number of social networks since within the Instagram application, you can link to your share photos with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous (recently acquired by Twitter) and Foursquare accounts. As a result of this integration and heavy use of social networks in general, social networks refer the majority of traffic to the Instagram website. Last week, 25% of the traffic to Instagram from social networks was from new visitors, most likely interested in learning more about Instagram after seeing photos within the feeds of their friends.

Last week, there was considerable excitement around the launch of Instagram app for Android phones, which became available on Google’s recently relaunched digital media store, Google Play. The app reached over 1 million downloads on the first day of availability. Visits to the Instagram website increased 59% over the previous week and Google Play ranked 6th among the downstream websites visited immediately after the Instagram website.

Please note this data does not include mobile traffic.

With March Madness well underway and the Final Four squaring off on Saturday for a spot in the National Championship game, searches around ‘March Madness’ reached a record high the week ending March 17th, up 16% over the same week last year. In fact, searches for variations of ‘March Madness’ have consistently grown each year since 2009.

News was also recently released announcing that March Madness dethroned the Super Bowl as the top betting event of year in 2012. While visits to the Sport Betting category did not grow significantly vs. last year, there was a lift in “NCAA bracket” searches, up 13% compared to 2011. Considering brackets are the standard way people place bets around March Madness, this makes sense. It’s also interesting to note that bracket-related searches typically peak toward the beginning of the tournament when many office pools get started.

Looking at the DMA breakdown of visitors to a custom category of NCAA Men’s Basketball Sites indexed against the online population, the top 4 DMAs which overindexed most during the previous 4 weeks, are close to or are home to a school in the Final Four. The data shows that visitors in the Louisville, KY DMA (where the University of Louisville is located) were 312% more likely to visit college basketball sites compared to the online population while visitors in the Lexington, KY DMA (where the University of Kentucky is located) were 241% more likely. Likewise, visitors from Kansas, specifically Wichita and Topeka, were also highly likely to visit NCAA sites during this time period.

Among DMAs that are located near other schools that made it to the Sweet Sixteen, online users in Cincinnati, OH (University of Cincinnati and Xavier University); Syracuse, NY (Syracuse University); and Lansing, MI (Michigan State University)were all significantly more likely than the online population to visit college basketball websites.

Thanks to Andrew Lopanik, Junior Analystwith the Strategic Services team at Hitwise for today's analysis.

Fans of the AMC drama Mad Men waited a long 17 months for the return of the show, which aired its fifth season premiere on Sunday, 3/25/2012. As compared with the previous week, total visits to the Mad Men page on the AMC website nearly doubled and total visits were up 21% when compared with the week ending 10/23/2010, the week of the Season 4 finale.

A portfolio of Mad Men search terms trended over a 2-year period shows two distinct peaks in searches around the Season 4 premiere (week ending 7/31/2010) and Season 4 finale (week ending 10/23/2010). A subsequent peak occurred in late March 2011 when AMC and show creator, Matthew Weiner, were in contract negotiations around the future of the show, and searches for “Mad Men deal” increased significantly during that time period. Overall searches on Mad Men terms the week leading up to the Season 5 debut were up 135% versus the previous week.

“Mad Men” and “Mad Men Season 5” were the search terms that experienced the largest increases when compared with the previous week (up 75% and 70%, respectively). During the same time period, “watch Mad Men online free” and “Mad Men season 5 trailer” emerged on the list of 10 most popular Mad Men-related search terms, indicating that fans were seeking out websites where they could catch up on the previous season and looking for a sneak peak of the upcoming season.

Search term variations around “watching episodes” of the show online reveals that in the 12 rolling weeks leading up to the season 5 launch, traffic was most likely to go to SideReel (an entertainment guide and community site for television and film enthusiasts which has limited episodes of Mad Men’s earlier seasons), followed by Blinkx (a video search engine which features clips various Mad Men videos and links to YouTube and Hulu where full length videos can be viewed). The official AMC website appears lower on the list of recipients of traffic from “watch episode” variations despite the fact that viewers can watch full episodes of the show online for free. However, in the week leading up to the Season 5 premiere, search term variations of “Mad Men” primarily sent traffic to the AMC website, followed by Wikipedia and The Internet Movie Database.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Strategic Services team (and Mad Men fan!) for today's analysis.

Fans of the AMC drama Mad Men waited a long 17 months for the return of the show, which aired its fifth season premiere on Sunday, 3/25/2012. As compared with the previous week, total visits to the Mad Men page on the AMC website nearly doubled and total visits were up 21% when compared with the week ending 10/23/2010, the week of the Season 4 finale.

A portfolio of Mad Men search terms trended over a 2-year period shows two distinct peaks in searches around the Season 4 premiere (week ending 7/31/2010) and Season 4 finale (week ending 10/23/2010). A subsequent peak occurred in late March 2011 when AMC and show creator, Matthew Weiner, were in contract negotiations around the future of the show, and searches for “Mad Men deal” increased significantly during that time period. Overall searches on Mad Men terms the week leading up to the Season 5 debut were up 135% versus the previous week.

“Mad Men” and “Mad Men Season 5” were the search terms that experienced the largest increases when compared with the previous week (up 75% and 70%, respectively). During the same time period, “watch Mad Men online free” and “Mad Men season 5 trailer” emerged on the list of 10 most popular Mad Men-related search terms, indicating that fans were seeking out websites where they could catch up on the previous season and looking for a sneak peak of the upcoming season.

Search term variations around “watching episodes” of the show online reveals that in the 12 rolling weeks leading up to the season 5 launch, traffic was most likely to go to SideReel (an entertainment guide and community site for television and film enthusiasts which has limited episodes of Mad Men’s earlier seasons), followed by Blinkx (a video search engine which features clips various Mad Men videos and links to YouTube and Hulu where full length videos can be viewed). The official AMC website appears lower on the list of recipients of traffic from “watch episode” variations despite the fact that viewers can watch full episodes of the show online for free. However, in the week leading up to the Season 5 premiere, search term variations of “Mad Men” primarily sent traffic to the AMC website, followed by Wikipedia and The Internet Movie Database.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Strategic Services team (and Mad Men fan!) for today's analysis.

This weekend is Mother’s Day and as the nation prepares to say a collective thank you to our Mums I thought this would be a good time to share our top 10 Mother’s Day facts for 2012:

1. 10% of all Mother’s Day UK searches include the word ‘when’. It’s Sunday 18 March so get cracking!

2. Since Monday (12 March) over a million UK Internet visits have been made to the Flowers & Gifts shopping category every day as sons and daughters seek to buy Mother’s Day gifts before Sunday.

3. Visits to the Flowers & Gifts category accounted for almost 2% of total Internet shopping in the UK this week.

4. The average online shopper spent 8 minutes and 18 seconds on a Flowers & Gift website this week in preparation for Mother’s Day. In the week before Valentine’s Day the average visit time was 7 minutes 25 seconds.

5. The UK will spend 927,000 hours this week shopping for Mother’s Day gifts.

6. Last year flowers were more popular than Mother’s Day gifts and cards. In the week leading up to Mother’s Day there were 5% more searches for flowers than gifts, and 68% more searches for flowers than cards.

7. This year searches for gifts are three times more popular than flowers, although there is always a late surge in searches for flowers for last minute online shoppers.

8. There is an emphasis this year on getting Mother’s Day gifts which are different from the standard fare. 1.7% of all searches for Mother’s Day gifts included the word ‘unusual’ whereas 1% contained the word ‘unique’. On the other hand 1.4% of gift searches included the word ‘homemade’.

9. Mother’s Day Hampers are the fast moving gift this year with searches for hampers twice as popular this year than last Mother’s Day. Hamper.com and Hampergifts.co.uk were among the biggest recipients of traffic for these searches.

10. Internet users in Stevenage are the most prolific visitors to the Flowers & Gift category in the run up to Mother’s Day. The people of Stevenage are 21% more likely than the average user to visit this category in March.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

UK Internet users made an astonishing 2.2 billion visits to search engines in February according to our latest monthly data.

Last month we showed how search was increasing as an online channel with 100 million additional UK Internet visits going to search engines in January 2012 compared to January 2011. The February stats are even more impressive, with 174 million more visits going to search engines when comparing February 2012 with February 2011. The further demand on search represents an 8.7% year-on-year increase in visits and early indications for March suggest this trend is going to continue.

My colleague James Murray has put together a cool search infographic to demonstrate some of the top search stats that we see using Hitwise data. You can also find further search data in our monthly press release which includes the latest search trends.

The February data shows Google was once again the dominant player in the UK search market accounting for 91.57% of all searches made in Britain. Google’s market share of searches was up by 0.93% since January and 0.89% year-on-year.

Meanwhile Microsoft Sites led by bing were unable to build on their growth at the beginning of the year and instead their market share slipped by 0.48% this month. Yahoo! Sites and Other search engines also decreased in market share in February.

You can read more about the most recent search stats in our monthly search press release or you can follow us on Twitter for the latest trends and data.

Search continues to grow as an online channel and as the biggest source of traffic to websites in the UK we thought it would be a good idea to encapsulate some of the cool search stats that we use on a daily basis into an infographic. Check out my efforts below with search according to Experian Hitwise:

You can read more about the most recent search stats in our monthly search press release or you can follow us on Twitter for the latest trends and data.

Apple’s much anticipated event today has set the rumour mills running into overdrive. If the wisdom of the crowds is to be believed then Apple’s announcement will unveil the new iPad 3.

Demand for the iPad 3 online reached its peak in the last week as 1 in every 2000 searches online were iPad 3 related. ‘ipad 3’ accounted for 18.5% of all searches containing the word ‘ipad’ – six times more searches than there were for ‘ipad 2’.

Having grouped together all of the iPad 3 search terms into a portfolio the recurring terms which people were searching for were for release dates, news, specs and prices. First and foremost among the UK consumer queries was when the iPad 3 would be released, with 19% of all iPad 3 searches in the 12 weeks ending 3 March containing the word ‘release’.

News and rumours accounted for 1.5% of all iPad 3 searches, whereas 0.1% of the searches specifically asked if the new device would have flash on it.

Our downstream data shows who were the top recipients last week from all iPad 3 searches. Unsurprisingly, as Apple itself keeps its cards very close to its chest, the amount of traffic it received is relatively low at less than 0.5% of iPad 3 search clicks. In the absence of official confirmation from Apple, the sites which are seen as authorities on rumours, news and gossip for the iPad 3 are techradar, CNET, the Daily Mail and BBC News.

Although the consensus seems to be that today’s announcement will be iPad related there has also been a spike in searches around Apple TV. Looking at the fast moving search terms containing the word ‘apple’ in the last week, the third and fourth fastest moving terms by volume were ‘apple tv 3’ and ‘new apple tv’ which doubled in search volume in the last week.

It is also worth noting that the last time Apple geared up to make a big announcement in October 2011 consumers were convinced that this would be the heralding of the iPhone 5. Searches for iPhone 5 were five times higher than for iPhone 4 in the first week of October, only for Apple to release the iPhone 4S, which was a surprise for many.

Ultimately only Apple know what is going to happen later on today. It could be the iPad 3 (and the UK has shown quite an appetite for it) but equally it might be a less momentous release of a software upgrade. Either way, we will be watching the trends online with great interest and will keep you up to date on the latest information on Twitter.

Whilst this season of “Downton Abbey” brought on fevers throughout the Abbey in the form of the Spanish Flu, the US has been rocked by a severe case of “Downton” fever. Interest in the program has grown by over 1400% during season two versus last year’s season one airing (defined by volume of searches YoY). Not only are people searching for a higher volume of searches for variations of “Downton”, but they are also seeking out information about a broader variety of “Downton” topics. In fact, the breadth of variants for “Downton” is almost ten times larger than the same time last year.

PBS has been the key beneficiary of searches for “Downton” variants, but shops and media outlets are also capturing traffic from the “Downton” effect. Amazon and the PBS Shop are capturing their share through paid search, as consumers seek out their own copies of the series on DVD and the companion guides for the series. Hulu has recently entered the paid search game for “Downton” terms, as Hulu Plus is airing “Downton Abbey” season one.

Search behaviors indicate that I’m not the only person dying to know whether Anna and Bates will finally rid themselves of the scurrilous charges brought against everyone’s favorite valet. Insatiable appetites for the series have web-users not only seeking out the Christmas special episode, but also looking for season three of the series. “Saturday Night Live’s” mock “Downton Abbey” advertisement has also caught attention with its hilarious take on how the show would be seen on Spike TV.

“Downton Abbey” has been a boon to PBS and to anyone who loves a good drama.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst with the Strategic Services team (and Downton Abbey fan!) for today's analysis.