SEARCH ENGINES DRIVE 48 PERCENT OF VISITS TO RECIPE SITES
butternut squash and sweet potato casserole recipes top the list
NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2005— In addition to shopping and gift-giving, entertaining and eating are the holiday season's most defining activities. Just as consumers are flocking online to shop, they are also using the Internet to plan home entertaining events, determine what stuffing to use for the turkey and which decadent desserts to serve throughout the festivities.
According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, 48 percent of visits to Food and Beverage - Reference sites originated at search engines for the week ending Nov. 12, 2005, a high number compared to Shopping & Classifieds - Grocery and Alcohol sites, which received 30 percent of upstream visits from search engines in that period. This heavy use of search, combined with the dominance of generic terms, indicates that searchers are more intent on finding the most appropriate recipe than getting it from any particular site.
The share of searches for "recipes" was up 25 percent for the week ending November 12, 2005 versus the prior week (week ending November 5, 2005), and visits to the top 10 recipe sites were up 9 percent in the same period. It can be expected that recipe searches and visits to recipe sites will increase by upwards of 50 percent for Thanksgiving week. In 2004, searches on the term "recipes" increased by 84 percent Thanksgiving week compared to two weeks prior, and visits to the top 10 recipe sites increased by 59 percent in that same period.
"Unlike online retail searching, which requires some planning ahead due to shipping, recipe searchers tend to wait until the last minute to find recipes and plan their grocery list" said Bill Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise. "We can expect that last year's steep seasonal peaks in recipe searches and visits to recipe sites will be repeated again this year."
"butternut squash recipes" shows largest increase
What recipes are consumers searching for leading up to Thanksgiving? Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveals that of the leading search terms sending visits to Food and Beverage - Reference sites, those with the largest increases for the week ending Nov. 12, 2005 compared to the previous week were: "butternut squash recipes" up 279 percent, "sweet potato casserole" up 130 percent, "thanksgiving recipes" up 89 percent, and "green bean casserole" up 74 percent.
Visitors to recipe sites 39 percent male
Hitwise demographic data shows that women comprised 61 percent of visits to Food & Beverage - Reference sites for the four weeks ending Nov. 5, 2005, and men comprised a significant 39 percent. In addition, visitors to Food & Beverage - Reference sites were 41 percent more likely to be over age 55 in that same period.
Top 10 Food & Beverage - Reference Websites
Period - Week Ending 11/12/05
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
1.
Food Network
www.foodnetwork.com
22.24%
2.
Kraft Foods USA
www.kraftfoods.com
9.42%
3.
All Recipes
www.allrecipes.com
9.12%
4.
Cooks.com
www.cooks.com
3.48%
5.
Recipezaar
www.recipezaar.com
3.18%
6.
About Southern Food
southernfood.about.com
3.16%
7.
BettyCrocker.com
www.bettycrocker.com
2.74%
8.
Epicurious.com
www.epicurious.com
2.58%
9.
RecipeSource
www.recipesource.com
1.69%
10.
Recipelink.com
www.recipelink.com
1.55%
Search Terms that drove Traffic to Food & Beverage - Reference Sites
Period - Week Ending 11/12/05
Generic Terms
Brand Terms
1.
recipes
1.
food network
2.
thanksgiving recipes
2.
foodnetwork.com
3.
recipe
3.
foodnetwork
4.
recipies
4.
foodtv.com
5.
chicken recipes
5.
www.foodnetwork.com
6.
mexican recipes
6.
food tv
7.
cookie recipes
7.
foodtv
8.
free recipes
8.
all recipes
9.
sweet potato casserole
9.
williams sonoma
10.
food
10.
food network.com
Weekly Holiday Shopping Tracker:
Data period: week ending Nov. 12, 2005
U.S visits to retail websites accounted for 8.95 percent of all visits to the Internet.
Top growing retail categories last week were: Toys and Hobbies (up 11.5%); Music (up 11.3%); Office Supplies (up 11.2%); Computers (up 10.6%) and Appliances and Electronics (up 9%).
Retail (8.95 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (16.9%). Retail is now ahead of Email sites (8.9 percent).
The leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Websites were "ipod", "lingerie", "furniture", auto parts", "tires", "flowers", "ipod mini", "shoes", "books", and "dell computers."
Hitwise U.S. Data
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Websites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Week Ending 11/12/05
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
% growth weekly (w/e 11/12/05 compared to w/e 11/05/05)
1.
eBay*
www.ebay.com
21.05%
-0.38%
2.
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
2.90%
0.06%
3.
Walmart.com
www.walmart.com
1.54%
0.11%
4.
Craig's List
www.craigslist.org
1.24%
-0.05%
5.
Dell USA
www.dell.com
1.13%
0.07%
6.
Target
www.target.com
1.07%
0.09%
7.
BestBuy.com
www.bestbuy.com
0.81%
0.04%
8.
NetFlix.com
www.netflix.com
0.70%
-0.06%
9.
JC Penney
www.jcpenney.com
0.66%
0.02%
10.
Shopping.com**
www.shopping.com
0.60%
0.07%
11.
BizRate.com**
www.bizrate.com
0.56%
0.03%
12.
Sears.com
www.sears.com
0.55%
0.05%
13.
Overstock.com
www.overstock.com
0.55%
0.01%
14.
CircuitCity.com
www.circuitcity.com
0.52%
0.05%
15.
My Points
www.mypoints.com
0.49%
0.03%
*Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites ( eBay Motors, eBay Stores)
**Only includes visits to these stand-alone sites www.shopping.com and www.bizrate.com and not other Shopping.com or Bizrate owned properties.
Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910.
About Hitwise:
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. For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com.
