Google Receives 87.81 Percent of Australian Searches in June 2008

Traffic from Search Engines to Online Video increases by 16 percent year-on-year

Melbourne – 17 July, 2008 – Hitwise announced today that Google search properties (Google.com and Google.com.au) accounted for 87.81 percent of all Australian searches in the four weeks ending 28 June, 2008.  This represents a 11.79 percent increase compared to 30 June 2007. MSN Search and Yahoo! Search properties each received 6.72 and 3.93 percent respectively. The remaining 42 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.54 percent of Australian searches.

In the  US market Google (www.google.com) accounted for 69.17 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending 28 June 2008. MSN Search and Yahoo! Search accounted for 5.46 percent and 19.62 percent respectively.  Similarly Google search properties (www.google.com and www.google.co.uk )  continues to  dominate in the U.K. market accounting for 87.34 percent of all UK searches followed by Yahoo! Search (4 percent) and MSN Search properties (3.72 percent) during the same period.

Traffic from Search Engines to emerging Online Video industry increases by 16 percent.

Search Engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories, with Google search properties driving the majority of traffic. When comparing June 2008 to June 2007, Hitwise Australia data reveals that upstream traffic from Search Engines to the Online Video* industry have increased by 16 percent.

In contrast, traffic from Search Engines to the Social Networks* industry has decreased by 10 percent during the same period.  Other mainstream industries such as Business & Finance, News & Media and Shopping & Classifieds have also showed a slight decrease in traffic coming directly from Search Engines.

For more information please email press.au@hitwise.com or contact Rheika Tompkins on03 8530 2400.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 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, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com 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.