It’s time to get a little bit tactical. On the Compete blog, we talk about data all the time, but very rarely do we actually “show” and not just “tell.” I get pretty fired up about Compete PRO, and the latest enhancements to Search Analytics provide a great excuse to devote an entire post to my favorite Compete PRO report: Keyword Destination.

Call it shameless self-promotion, but as far as I’m concerned, no online marketer can live without Keyword Destination, which sheds light on where people go downstream after searching for specific keywords.

Continue reading “Getting The Most Out Of Compete PRO : Keyword Destination Reports” »

Let’s face it. At this point, if you’re not somehow plugged into Twitter, you’re either asleep at the wheel, in complete denial, or my mother. For most people, the allure of real time news, spicy celebrity gossip, and an endless flow of whimsical trivialities from the Twitter pipe is simply irresistible. For marketers, however, Twitter is not all fun and games – especially when dollars, customer relationships, and brand credibility are on the line.

The month of August has been a rough one for Twitter, replete with major outages, security issues, and intermittent downtime. With the rocky road has been troubling to folks at Twitter, it has also spread serious waves throughout the Twitter ecosystem, inevitably impacting the numerous entities who rely on the resource on a regular basis. Close to home, the compete.com team experienced some of this pain during the heat of a Datanugget Friday session on August 7th (For those unfamiliar with Compete Datanugget Fridays, the idea is “Tweet us a domain and we’ll tweet you back a tasty datanugget for that site”). With nugget requests from our followers steadily flowing in, suddenly things screeched to a halt. Twitter outage straight up killed our Datanugget Frida¬¬¬y and all those positive brand interactions.

Using Daily metrics from Compete PRO, I took a look at the August outages to understand how they impacted the biggest sites directly dependent upon Twitter. Checking out Daily Reach for Twitter’s own status page, status.twitter.com, we’re able to easily identify the specific dates when Twitter was down by traffic to the page, as people sought answers and updates on August 6-7 and again on August 11th.

So with Twitter down and out, which sites took the fall? The Daily Attention data below show that time spent on popular sites twitpic.com, bit.ly, ow.ly on these days was way down from normal levels.

If you’re a marketer married to Twitter, or a site that feeds off the service, how do you avoid getting dragged into the mire? It’s sort of like learning to live without electricity for a little while. No perfect solution right now, but fire up the generator and get creative with some other channels. If all else fails, light some candles, grab a blanket, and wait for the lights to go back on.

May’s data is here and it’s hot! It was a big month and the data shows some tell-tale signs that Twitter’s days of monster growth are waning, Microsoft’s $100 million marketing budget for Bing may be paying off, and the sour economy is not negatively impacting summer vacation plans.

Twitter Site Visitors Put on the Brakes

It had to happen eventually, and May was the month that traffic to Twitter.com started to show signs of fatigue (up 1% to 19.7 Million Unique Visitors). While this is not the whole story behind the emerging Social site because users often interact with Twitter without visiting the actual site, it is a sign that new user growth in the U.S. may be flattening. Stay tuned for more on this one going forward.

Big May for Microsoft

The Softies had a busy month up in Redmond, spending big budgets to launch Bing as well as a new version of their Zune player. Early indicators point to some solid buzz around both products, with traffic to zune.net increasing 13% to 708,000 UVs, and Bing driving 635,000 people through the door.

Home and Garden

April showers have clearly given way to May flowers, at least in some parts of the country – sites spanning the Home and Garden category got a nice bump in May, as consumers took to their yards, tended to gardens, and fully embraced the warmer weather. Notable movers included Home Depot’s homeimproverclub.com (up 132% to 500,000 UVs), managemyhome.com (up 52% to 458,000 UVs), backyardgardener.com (up 26% to 531,000 UVs), and hgtv.com (up 24% to 5.5 Million UVs).

Domestic Travel Heats Up

Budgets may be tighter this year, but all signs point to consumers still making vacation plans for the summer. Visitor traffic increased to the National Parks and Services site, nps.gov (up 14% to 3.2 Million UVs), and local theme park sites, like hersheypark.com (up 47% to 416,000 UVs). As a result, major hotel sites like holidayinn.com (up 18% to 979,000 UVs), bestwestern.com (up 11% to 1.9 Million UVs), and daysinn.com (up 14% to 1 Million UVs) all saw a lift alongside rental car sites, which were also positively impacted – budget.com (up 25% to 1.7 Million UVs), hertz.com (up 1.7 Million UVs), and avis.com (up 10% to 1.4 Million UVs).

See you at the Show: Movie Ticket Sites

Some blockbuster films hit the box office in May, including Star Trek, Terminator, and Up. As a result, traffic to movie ticket sites like fandango.com (up 29% to 8 Million UVs), moviefone.com (up 23% to 5.2 Million UVs), and movietickets.com (up 28% to 3.7 Million UVs) increased considerably.

Another month has come and gone, leaving behind a trail of data and some interesting stories around springtime, sports, and social media. What changes did April bring? We dug into the numbers to look at fast moving sites, traffic trends, and some of the biggest stories of 2009 that we’ve been covering.

Everybody’s asking about it, so we’ll kick it off with Twitter, an ever-growing presence in the social arena. Aided by Ashton, Oprah, and significant media buzz, Unique Visitors to twitter.com increased to 19.4 Million in April, surpassing the New York Times for the first time. Oprah’s first tweet on April 17th delivered the highest Daily Reach ever to the site, with nearly 2% of all Americans online visiting Twitter.

Feeding off Twitter: Sure, Twitter is growing, but so are the many sites that rely on it. Fast movers in April included tweetmeme.com (up 338% to 1.68 Million Unique Visitors), tweetdeck.com (up 69% to 915,000 UVs), twittergadget.com (up 56% to 100,000 UVs), twitpic.com (up 37% to 3.33 Million UVs), and bit.ly (up 53% to 1.81 Million UVs).

Spring Fever: We know that spring is in the air when traffic flow to certain sites pick up. Pet lovers flocked to 1800petmeds.com in April (up 33% to 1.68 Million UVs), green thumbs and lawn caregivers went to scotts.com (up 46% to 710,000 UVs), and traffic to baseball sites were up sharply month over month. Mlb.com was up 62% to 12.25 Million Unique Visitors, and minorleaguebaseball.com also saw a nice bump (up 136% to 1.22 Million UVs). Red Sox Nation will be pleased to know that in addition to kicking off 2009 with 5 straight wins against the hated Yankees, the Sox also won the online traffic battle in April (367,000 UVs to redsox.com vs. 346,000 to yankees.com).

Micro-site Mania: Big upticks to some CPG and food retail micro-sites this month – who said these guys don’t spend online? Between content, contests, and coupons for consumers, some of these branders drove some serious traffic in April. The biggest food related movers included reynoldsrecycled.com (1.64 UVs) Taco Bell’s bajablast.com (up exponentially to 562,000 UVs), cicispizza.com (up 436% to 1.07 Million UVs), Hellmann’s buildtheperfectsandwich.com (up 417% to 441,000 UVs), and kfc.com (up 69% to 1.17 Million UVs).

The Easter Effect: Flower and gift sites saw a nice bump thanks to marketing around the Easter holiday. Ftd.com led the charge (up 282% to 2.73 Million UVs), with proflowers.com (up 59% to 750,000 UVs), and 1800flowers.com (up 26% to 774,000 UVs) also rising in the ranks. Godiva.com also showed a big lift (up 303% to 698,000 UVs).

We’ll keep an eye on all of these stories going forward to see what changes May will bring. In the meantime, find out how a new month of traffic has impacted site traffic, Search, and the overall internet landscape in your industry with all of Compete’s powerful tools on compete.com.

For breaking stories, real time data updates, and to participate in our cool new datanugget Fridays, be sure to follow us on Twitter!

Some big stories in March, and we’ll kick it off with the hottest one of all: Twitter. Sure, lots of buzz about the impact of Twitter as a game changer – everyone from NASA astronauts to NBA players to the hosts of “The View” are out there tweeting up a storm. The result: Unique Visitors to twitter.com were up 76.8% in March, with over 14 Million Americans trafficking to the site.

In other Social Media news, Facebook continues to ramp growth, increasing Unique Visitors 23.4% month over month. The page view data shows that Facebook is above and beyond the rest: over 91 Billion page views in March, over 50% more than second-ranked Yahoo.

Bring on the Madness
Sports sites sizzled in March, impacted by the NCAA tournament, MLB kick off, and Tiger’s return to the links. Bracketologists, fantasy baseball enthusiasts, and other aficionados surged to online sports properties. Leading the pack were cbssports.com (up 182% in Unique Visitors over February), ncaa.org (132% growth), and sportsnetwork.com (53%). The tourney and the slowdown of the NBA season appears to have affected nba.com traffic, down nearly 17% in unique visitors from February.

In addition to readying for the MLB season, baseball fans across the U.S. looked to mlb.com in March for World Baseball Classic scores, highlights, and stories. Unique visitors to the site surged by nearly 2 million, reaching an all-time March high of 7.5 Million visitors.

Skittles Success
Did Skittles’ bold move to redesign their site around Social Media pay off? According to their unique visitor increase in March, it would certainly appear that way. The skittles.com site was replaced with a live Twitter feed, with any tweet mentioning the word “Skittles” appearing on the page. Huge media buzzed around the strategy, and as a result, traffic to the site surged by an astonishing 2072%, attracting 441,855 people in March. Check out the daily reach graph below.

What changes will the month of April bring? Will Twitter continue it’s unbelievable growth trajectory? We’ll keep our fingers on the pulse of all things online and make sure to keep you informed.

Find out how a new month of traffic has impacted site traffic, Search, and the overall internet landscape in your industry with all of Compete PRO’s powerful tools.

Please email Compete Member Support or give us a call at 617-933-5600 with any questions

U.S. markets may have risen by 15% in the last 3 weeks, but as anyone who works in an office knows, overall employee productivity in late March is pretty pathetic. The primary culprit: the NCAA tournament. Sure, many of our colleagues don’t even bother coming to work, fully accepting their addiction to heart-pounding hoops action, support of their alma maters, and the religious scrutiny of their brackets. Those who don’t stay home, however, are shamelessly plugged in at the office, scouring the web for real time scores, news, and game highlights.

With this year’s NCAA tourney wrapping up last night in Motown, what better time to look back at the past few weeks of March Madness and see which of the major online hoops properties managed to effectively attract and engage passionate fans, crazed bracketologists, and everyone in between. Throw a high unemployment rate into the mix, and the bracket traffic data really starts to sizzle. So which site came out ahead as king of the online court? I took a close look at NCAA bracket pages for ESPN, CBS Sports, and Yahoo! to find out.

Week 1 traffic to all three properties showed a strong year over year uptick, with ESPN taking the lead in 2009 from CBS, the 2008 leader. No shocker that overall week 1 traffic volumes eclipsed week 2 numbers: clearly a result of heated bracket building and heavy first round action in the tournament’s first week.

While ESPN reigned supreme in the 2009 battle for bracket builders, CBS proved that in the end, content is the real name of the game. Combining live streaming video coverage of games on site, exclusive highlights and commentary, weekly contests, and user generated content, the CBS bracket site averaged 7.8 pages per visit in Week 1 of the tournament, 20% stickier than ESPN at 6.5 pages per visit. Week 2 brought more of the same, with CBS closing the Unique Visitors gap and maintaining a clear engagement advantage.

Big month ahead: Major League Baseball kicks off, NBA postseason begins, and NHL playoffs get started. We’ll be sure to keep our eyes on the Fantasy ball, and keep you posted on the biggest stories out there in the online sporting world.