Holiday Shopping Fast Movers - Lasoo leading search term

13 December 2007 - Melbourne - Hitwise Australia, the leading online competitive intelligence, today announced that new shopping search engine, Lasoo featured as the fastest moving search term to the Shopping & Classifieds industry for the 4 weeks ending 1 December 2007.  This indicates both a successful launch campaign and consumer interest in the service which offers current specials from participating catalogues around Australia. Lasoo ranked 40^th overall in the Shopping & Classifieds industry for the week ending 1 December 2007.

Hitwise’s Fast Moving Search Term Reports reveal which retailers and brands are top-of-mind amongst consumers leading up to the holiday shopping season.  They include: ‘angus and robinson’; ‘crocs’; ‘target au’; and ‘oakley sunglasses’.  Festive items within the top 15 fast moving search terms included ‘hampers’, ‘christmas lights’ and ‘christmas presents’.

In the Appliances & Electronics industry, JB Hi-Fi Australia and Retravision Perth were the fastest moving retailers being searched for by Australians. ‘Nokia 1110i’ was the fastest moving product search term, with ‘fuji digital camera’ ranked at 12^th position. White good brands that appeared in the top 15 included ‘black and decker australia’ and ‘westinghouse cooktops’.

Women’s clothing featured prominently amongst the top terms to the Apparel & Accessories industry, including ‘mini dresses’, ‘women’s swimwear’, ‘womens shoes’, and ‘ladies watches’. ‘Ugg’ also featured at 14^th position, representing a global fashion trend.

In the retail Books industry, recipe publication, ‘maggies harvest’ was the fastest moving search term, while fantasy fiction writer, ‘kinley macgregor’ was the leading author-related search term. Book retailers in the top 15 included ‘angus books’, ‘bookshops australia’ and ‘abc shops australia’.

“Retailers have the opportunity to intensify their online campaigns as they compete for consumer spend,” said Sandra Hanchard, Hitwise Research Analyst. “As Christmas draws nearer, several retail industries have increased in market share dramatically, including Department Stores, Books and Appliances & Electronics which grew by 36%, 34% and 28% respectively comparing weeks ending 6 October 2007 and 8 December 2007.”

For more information on Hitwise Search Intelligence™, please visit www.hitwise.com.au or for media queries, contact Rheika Tompkins at press.au@hitwise.com

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 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.