New Zealand Online - Month in review

Hitwise Press Release New Zealand Online - Month in review

Auckland, 20th November 2003; Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, has reported the following online trends in New Zealand:

Auckland fingers do the running as marathon sites leap up rankings.

The 2003 Auckland Marathon was ran on November 2nd this year, with the pre-race build-up pushing droves of visitors to the official site - www.aucklandmarathon.co.nz. Race day saw the site rank at 50th position for all sites visited by NZ internet users, far cry from the 1,717 rank it languished in two weeks previous. Interest in the marathon has seen related sites climb in the Hitwise rankings too. Both Pop Runner ( www.poprun.co.nz) and Marathon Photos ( www.marathon-photos.com) proved to be quite popular as both sites provide photos of the marathon.

Pop Runner found itself first in the Business & Finance - Marketing category for the week ending November 8, gaining 35.4% of the market share, with www.aucklandmarathon.co.nz providing over 40% of downstream traffic. Marathon Photos increased its rankings to 16th position for the Sports category and capturing 2nd position in the Entertainment category. Marathon Photos peaked on November 5, with 18% of the Entertainment - Photography category.

Brash start for new National Leader

On October 27, the New Zealand National Party elected former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash as its new leader. As a result, Hitwise statistics show that Don Brash's website ( www.donbrash.com) and the National Party's site ( www.national.org.nz) increased their Hitwise rankings. Don Brash.com rose from 23rd in the Lifestyle - Politics category to 2nd in the four days from October 23-27, with 25% of traffic referred from search engine Google. The National Party climbed from 67th to 12th in the Lifestyle parent category on October 28, the day after the leadership change had taken place.

It's all coming up roses for the Ellerslie Flower Show

The annual Ellerslie Flower Show ( www.ellerslieflowershow.co.nz) takes place on the last weekend of November, and as interest in the event builds, visitor numbers to the website are blooming. Sitting 6th in the Business & Finance - Agricultural category for the week ending November 8, the site took 1.88% of market share, with over 30% of visitors coming from Google (www.google.com).

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading provider of online competitive intelligence services to Fortune 1000 corporations, providing corporate marketers with real-time insights into their online competitive environment. Via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, Hitwise collects anonymous information about the usage habits of more than 25 million Internet users worldwide, covering home, work and educational usage. With a categorized database of over 300,000 of the world's most popularly visited websites, Hitwise is able to offer a daily analysis of over 150 vertical markets in each country of operation.Hitwise is a privately held company and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and operates in New Zealand, UK, US, Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore.

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