January
Our analysis of the decline in flight searches and the shift from flights to the USA and Eurozone countries to domestic and further flung destinations caused some controversy, but has broadly proved to be an accurate prediction as to what happened in the travel sector this year. This month we also highlighted the fact that social networking had come of age in the UK and overtaken pornography in terms of Internet visits.
February
Twitter was one of the fastest growing websites of 2009 and undoubtedly the most talked about. Thanks to a load of free publicity from Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry, the micro-blogging service entered the top 100 in February and is currently one of the 30 most visited websites in the UK. We wrote more blogs about Twitter than any other site this year, but there was still space for other social media sites too. Two particularly good examples we highlighted this month were: The Telegraph using Digg to pick up traffic and the seemingly unstoppable rise of Martin Lewis, the MoneySavingExpert.
March
March was the month that Richard Seymour presented his excellent webinar analysing the ways in which us Brits use the different search engines. This post highlights the most searched for subjects on Google, Yahoo!, bing and Ask; while this one illustrates the results of some similar analysis carried out on Google News.
April
Twitter time again, and I’ve used a version of the chart in the post illustrating where people go after visiting Twitter in more presentations than I can count this year! This was also the month when we analysed the growing influence of social media on shopping websites and the SEO opportunity provided by shop opening times information (something that is particularly relevant over the Christmas period).
May
This was the month that the Telegraph broke the biggest domestic news story of the year: the MPs’ expenses scandal. We produced a couple of blogs: the first analysing search behaviour, the second looking at the impact on the Telegraph’s traffic.
June
In June our list of the top 100 student websites resulted in some good comment and debate in the blogosphere and on Twitter.
July
A pretty quiet month on the blog, primarily because I spent most of the month on paternity leave. Aside from that analysis of pregnancy searches, the most popular blog asked: ‘Are voucher searches on the decline?’ The answer was ‘No’, and this Christmas we’re predicting a 25% increase on last year.
August
In August we revealed that content driven websites now receive almost than twice as many UK Internet visits as transactional sites. Those are another two charts that I’ve included in a lot of presentations this year.
September
Another interesting month for social media, with Twitter overtaking MySpace and Capital One proving that Facebook can drive traffic to finance websites.
October
With retailers starting to smell to Christmas in the air, it was time for Experian Hitwise’s resident gadget expert Richard Seymour to start looking into his crystal ball and start predicting what products would be hot this festive season. His first bit of analysis showed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 finally overtaking perennial favourite the Nintendo Wii in our Hot Consumer Electronic List.
November
Although the recession isn’t yet officially over, there is no doubt that some green shoots are beginning to appear online. After a couple years writing about the impact of the credit crunch on online behaviour, it was nice to be able to highlight some positive news: the first annual increase in traffic to property websites in over two years.
December
The serious: the pre-Christmas online retail peak moved a week closer to Christmas this year. The clever: Richard Seymour successfully predicts that Joe McElderry will win the X Factor. The just plain wonderful: Hitwise data shows that Rage Against the Machine will steal the Christmas Number from Simon Cowell (and they did!)
From: http://weblogsfeed.hitwise.com/~r/hitwise/uk/~3/0ihVO1pSyNU/2009_online_the_year_in_review.html
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