UK Searches for "global warming" up 22% in 2 years;

Google Sends Traffic to US Sites, Posing Challenges for UK Policy Makers.

London 28^th June 2007

From the warmest April to record rainfall in June, UK weather is increasingly unpredictable and whilst the debate rages about the cause and effect of climate change, Hitwise analysis reveals that UK consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to research these issues - in particular, for education on global warming and interest in calculating a carbon footprint.

Whilst share of UK searches for "global warming" has increased by 22% over the past two years, Hitwise analysis reveals that searches rise significantly around heavy coverage in the media. For example, UK searches for "global warming" doubled in February when the first controversial Stern report from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was published and again tripled in April as the second of four IPCC reports was released.

As media coverage of green issues increases, so does interest in ways to reduce our environmental impact. David Miliband's announcement that the government would launch a website to help consumers calculate their own carbon footprint drove searches for "carbon footprint" up six-fold last week. Similarly, UK searches for "freecycle" the network for recycling household goods have more than doubled in the past year.

Google Sends UK Traffic to US Websites

UK interest in environmental issues is sending traffic to US websites, raising challenges for policy makers and those seeking to influence public opinion within the UK. The top website receiving UK traffic from the term "global warming" in the week ending 23rd June is Wikipedia, with the online encyclopaedia receiving over one quarter of visits from searches for "global warming". After Wikipedia, the top sites are globalwarming.org, climatehotmap.org, Royal Society and the US Environment Protection Agency. 

The sites visited by US and UK internet users after searching for "global warming" are very similar, with four of the top five websites receiving traffic from searches for "global warming" the same in the two markets. US searches for "global warming" sent traffic to Wikipedia, globalwarming.org, climatehotmap.org, US Environment Protection Agency and environmentaldefense.org. Similarly, UK searches for "carbon footprint", despite rising on the back of Miliband's announcement, sent 69% of UK visits to www.carbonfootprint.com, a US environmental website.

"Google, which accounts for 79% of UK searches, largely dictates the flow of UK web traffic and this is reflected by the similar sites visited after searching for "global warming" in the US and UK", commented Heather Hopkins VP of Research for Hitwise UK. "Google determines the websites that appear at the top of the listings largely based on inbound links. On global issues such as global warming, UK websites compete with US websites for those links and the attention of search engines. With searches for "global warming", only two UK websites (BBC and Royal Society) appeared among the top 25 websites receiving visits from searches for "global warming" last week. With searches for "carbon footprint", traffic again went to a US website. This poses a serious challenge to UK organisations and government agencies seeking to influence public opinion." 

Websites that received traffic from the term "global warming" for the week ending 23rd June:

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, 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 ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures 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 is a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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