Search Engines, Not Social Networking Sites, Drive Traffic to World Cup Sites in Hong Kong

Search Engines, Not Social Networking Sites, Drive Traffic to World Cup Sites in Hong Kong

The official FIFA site climbs into the top ten most visited soccer sites by Hong Kong Internet users, taking share from established sites, ESPN Soccernet and Sina HK’s Soccer portal

Hong Kong, 23 June 2010 — With the World Cup in full swing, Experian Hitwise, a leading online competitive intelligence service, has identified that search engines and portals are playing a bigger role in driving traffic to dedicated World Cup websites, more so than social networking sites and forums (See Figure 1).

Search engines drive traffic to World Cup sites
The increasing influence of search engines indicates an increase in search volumes around the World Cup, while key news stories in the major portals are driving an increase in interest, which in turn is benefiting the specific World Cup related websites.

Figure 1

'Events as big as the World Cup provide marketers with an enormous opportunity to maximize their online activity,’ said Alan Long, Research Director for Asia Pacific at Experian Hitwise. “As more people turn towards the Internet as a primary information source, it is getting increasingly critical for businesses to understand how people use it. Search engines continue to be the primary way that Internet users navigate to key industries sites. This highlights the need for businesses to closely monitor online traffic trends such as these, so they can identify where they should target to engage their audience.'

In the week ending 8 May 2010, search engines overtook social networking and forums as the key driver of traffic to the World Cup sites (See Figure 2). In the same week, portal frontpages overtook soccer sites as the third highest referrer of visitation by Hong Kong users.
Figure 2

FIFA.com climbs into top ten soccer sites
In the week leading to the launch of the FIFA World Cup, the official FIFA site climbed into the top ten soccer sites visited by Hong Kong Internet users with its share of visits increased 42.8% in the week ending 5 June 2010 compared to the week ending 29 May 2010 (See Figure 3), it also ranked first among leading World Cup focused websites (See Figure 4). As a result, visits to established sites such as market leader ESPN Soccernet, Sina HK’s Soccer portal and Goal.com decreased by 2.4%, 6.6% and 2.7% respectively.

However, there were still some other winners. In the lead up to the World Cup, some sites including NANA (gooooal.com), GoalGoalGoal (goalgoalgoal.com), SPBO1 and Sina’s World Cup specific website, 2010.sina.com.cn, all saw an increase in traffic. (See Figure 3)

GoalGoalGoal saw a substantial increase of 13.6% in its share of visits in the week ending 5 June, 2010 compared to the week ending 29 May, 2010. Sports news website SPBO1 almost tripled its share of visits in the same week, making an appearance at number 15 in soccer rankings.

Figure 3

Source: Experian Hitwise. Share of Visits to Sport – Soccer by Hong Kong Internet users, week ending 5 June 2010 compared to week ending 29 May 2010.

"The Internet statistics enable marketing forward with data-driven predictive insight. Marketers can identify the trends of the consumer behaviour, their channel preferences to implement more effective targeted and speedier marketing initiatives. Experian Hitwise plays a vital role in helping companies to increase customer revenue and loyalty," said Long.

Other findings indicated that World Cup specific sites made up 5.1 % of visits among soccer sites in the week prior to the start of the World Cup, a growth of 117.4%.

Figure 4
The leading World Cup focused websites visited by Hong Kong users are:

Contact:
Margaret Lam
VP of Marketing, Asia Pacific
Tel: +852 2839 5276
Email: margaret.lam@hk.experian.com

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About Hitwise
Hitwise, an Experian company, is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive Web sites and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with Internet service providers around the world, Hitwise uses its patented methodology to anonymously capture the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy-to-use, Web-based service designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, an Experian company (FTS-EXPN) http://www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available athttp://www.hitwise.com/hk.

For up-to-date analysis of online trends, visit the Hitwise Intelligence – Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com.