Hitwise News Release

Public Transport Websites Popular Amid Fuel Rises

Melbourne, September 22, 2005 – As Australian families feel the pinch of rising fuel prices, motorists are looking online for alternative means of transport. Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, reports an increase of 18% in the number of visits to public transport websites in September 2005 compared to the same time last year. These include private operator and government websites that offer timetable and route information for bus, rail and ferry services.

Transport Infoline (www.131500.com.au) was the most visited website in this category, increasing its traffic by 13.9% between August 20 and September 17, 2005. Transport Infoline provides updates on service changes and an online travel planner for combined transport modes, for example a bus and train trip.

Price conscious surfers visited FuelWatch (www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au) and Motor Mouth (www.motormouth.com.au) in droves to compare the best fuel price by area. Motor Mouth also offers daily fuel price email alerts. FuelWatch and Motor Mouth ranked 8^th and 18^th respectively in the Hitwise Travel – Transport category, for the week ending September 17, 2005.

Search Terms on ‘petrol’ have increased substantially, with growth of 502% between July 2 and September 17, 2005. Similarly, ‘fuel’ searches increased by 55% over the same time period.

Visits to Business and Finance – Property websites have interestingly risen by 8% between August 20 and September 17, suggesting that users are hunting for properties closer to central business districts and with easy access to public transport, especially as fuel prices could rise further.

Top 20 searches for Travel – Transport included ‘transperth’, ‘cityrail’, ‘metlink’, ‘connex’ and ‘queensland transport’, for the 12 week period ending September 17, 2005.

Hitwise is the world’s 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 search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega 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 media enquiries, please contact:

James Borg

+613 8530 2420 or james.borg@hitwise.com