HITWISE UK TRAVEL UPDATE

Visits to News and Travel sites surge following suspected terrorist plot

London, 10^th August 2006

On the day that a suspected terrorist plot to blow up several aircrafts was foiled by British authorities, Hitwise today reports that UK holiday makers went on to news and travel sites in their droves to find out how anti-terror measures at airports would impact their travel plans.

Visits to BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk) were up 50% yesterday as it became the the 9th most visited website in the UK (up from # 14 the previous day), whilst the website for BAA (baa.co.uk) became the 8th most visited Travel website and the 64th most visited site, with its visits up 8 fold.

Websites for the UK's two biggest airports, Heathrow and Gatwick, also saw a dramatic increase: www.gatwickairport.com became the 21st most visited Travel site and www.heathrowairport.com increased more than 200 positions to rank as the 23rd most visited Travel site. Share of visits to Aviation sites increased 79%, with websites for easyJet, Ryanair and British Airways  all experiencing rapid growth (48%, 76% and 61% respectively). However, the share of visits to travel agencies was down 19% yesterday, indicating that travellers were contacting airlines directly for updates on delays and cancellations. Stranded air travellers also sought alternative routes out of the UK, with visits to Eurostar's site (www.eurostar.com) up 53%.

Hitwise reveals that visits to news sites were almost on a par with July 7th last year, the day of the London bombings, accounting for 5.26% share of all internet visits and up 18% from the previous day. BBC News, Yahoo! UK News, Google News UK, MSN News UK and Sky News  were all popular online destinations. With the terror alert now elevated to "critical" in the UK, websites for MI5 (www.mi5.gov.uk) and The Home Office (www.homeoffice.gov.uk) were also popular sources. MI5's website leapt in the daily rankings from #254 to #9 among Government sites and The Home Office site jumped from #75 to #10.

Share of daily UK internet visits to News websites, 13th July - 10th August 2006 :

Top News websites by share of UK internet visits, Thursday 10^th August:

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service.  Only Hitwise provides its 1200 global clients 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 ISP's 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 our 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 privately held company, headquartered in New York City 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.

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