Hitwise New Zealand Newsletter - May 2006

Hitwise New Zealand Newsletter - May 2006

Bebo leads against MySpace

According to Hitwise, New Zealand Internet users prefer the social networking website, Bebo (www.bebo.com) over MySpace, which was acquired by News Corporation last year for $580 million.

Website visits to Bebo overtook MySpace week ending April 22, 2006 in the Hitwise Net Communities and Chat category, and has since climbed to hold over 10% of visits for the week ending May 20, 2006. Hitwise Search Intelligence indicates that 'bebo' is a leading search term amongst NZ web surfers, featuring 19th amongst all Internet searches, compared to 122nd position for 'myspace', 24 weeks ending May 20, 2006.

Bebo has effectively leveraged email marketing to increase its membership base. MSN Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) contributed 40.1% of upstream traffic for the week ending May 20, 2006. Prior to a substantial increase in visits to Bebo in March 2006, MSN Hotmail accounted for over half of Bebo's traffic for the week ending March 4, 2006.

A core function that Bebo offers is the ability for users to stay in touch with school friends. While Bebo is based in the US, Kiwis have shown a preference to Bebo over local social networking sites for maintaining friendships. Indeed, local websites in the Net Community category attracted only 13.3% of visits for the week ending May 20, 2006. Trade Me's Oldfriends.co.nz ranked at 8th position with 2.3% market share.

Social networking websites account for a significant portion of online activity by New Zealand Internet users, with 4.7% of all visits week ending May 20, 2006. Bebo looks set to increase its online influence, now ranking within the Top 20 websites in All Categories. Bebo furthermore ranked as the 7th most popular website visited prior to Google NZ (www.google.co.nz), contributing 1.25% of its upstream traffic.

Industry Search Term Report for Education - Reference

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 24 weeks ending May 20, 2006 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Education - Reference' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'wikipedia' representing 0.81% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Education - Reference' industry.

Search Term Share (%)
1. wikipedia 0.81
2. dictionary 0.80
3. thesaurus 0.33
4. world clock 0.30
5. tki 0.24
6. auckland museum 0.17
7. online dictionary 0.16
8. auckland city library 0.14
9. freebmd 0.14
10. auckland city libraries 0.13

Fast Mover - Inland Revenue Department of New Zealand
www.ird.govt.nz

Position week ending April 22: 105
Position week ending April 29: 88
Positions jumped: 17

The Inland Revenue Department of New Zealand's (www.ird.govt.nz) website climbed 17 places to a ranking of 88 in All Categories among sites visited by New Zealand Internet users in the week ending April 29. www.ird.govt.nz has been number one in the Government - National category for the past three months. Its market share increased from 7.66% to 8.65% in the last week of April and it moved up one position from a rank of 16 to 15 in the Business and Finance parent category.

The Inland Revenue Department of New Zealand is the country's taxation body, and their website provides information and services. Users visit the site to find out about their tax obligations and entitlements, rebates, child support and family assistance, and student loans. The increase in market share is no doubt due to the end of the financial year in New Zealand.

The data for the week show that users were predominantly visiting banking sites before and after www.ird.govt.nz. The sites for the National Bank of New Zealand (www.nationalbank.co.nz), Westpac New Zealand Online Banking (sec.westpactrust.co.nz), Bank of New Zealand (www.bnz.co.nz) and ANZ Australia and New Zealand (www.anz.com) are all appearing in the traffic flow, sharing between them approximately 8% of traffic before and 16% after www.ird.govt.nz.

Category Spotlight: Food and Beverage - Brands and Manufacturers

This sub-category is for manufacturers of food, drink or alcoholic drink brands. Wineries and breweries are included. Retailers are categorised in 'Shopping and Classifieds - Grocery and Alcohol'. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 20/05/2006 » Ranks by 'Visits'.

Top 10 Food and Beverage - Brands and Manufacturers sites for New Zealand audiences

Local Competitiveness Index
1. Woolworths New Zealand
2. Foodtown
3. McDonalds Worldwide
4. Tui Beer
5. Nestlé New Zealand
6. KFC
7. Goodman Fielder
8. Pepsiworld
9. Fonterra Co-operative Group
10. Chelsea Sugar NZ

57.9% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

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About this Newsletter

This monthly e-mail Newsletter is designed to provide Hitwise subscribers with analysis of new developments, industry trends and competitive activity. The powerful real-time web intelligence capabilities of Hitwise and a continual flow of additional research findings make this an indispensable business resource.

Brought to you by the team at Hitwise New Zealand - www.hitwise.co.nz.

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