Hitwise Australia- World Cup and Socceroos Update

Melbourne, June 9,2006. On the eve of FIFA World Cup 2006, Hitwise takes a look at how football fever has struck Australian Internet users. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, visits to the Sports – Soccer category have increased by 38.8% in the past three months, between weeks ending March 4, 2006 and June 3, 2006.

SBS - The World Game ( www.theworldgame.com.au ) was the most popular Sports - Soccer website for the week ending June 3, 2006, with 10.6% market share. The official FIFA World Cup website ( fifaworldcup.yahoo.com ) ranked 3^rd with 8.9%, and the official website of the Socceroos ( au.sports.yahoo.com/football ) ranked 10^th with 1.6% market share.

Hitwise Clickstream data reveal the Top 5 sports retailers to enjoy downstream traffic from the FIFA World Cup website for the week ending June 3, 2006: Kitbag (www.kitbag.com), Adidas (www.adidas.com), Rebel Sport Australia (www.rebelsport.com.au), Soccer.com and Nike (www.nike.com).

Search Intelligence data indicate there were 2,222 variations on the search term, ‘socceroos’ for the 12 weeks ending June 3, 2006. Top search terms referred to several merchandise items, including: ‘socceroos jersey’, ‘socceroos song’, ‘socceroos flag’, ‘socceroos wallpaper’, ‘socceroos logo’, ‘socceroos photos’, and ‘socceroos scarf’.

Top Sites Sending Traffic to the official FIFA World Cup Site for the week ending June 3, 2006

Media Inquiries:

James Borg - Marketing Manager – Asia Pacific

james.borg@hitwise.com  

+613 8530 2420

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.au

For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.