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Analyst speak: Searches reveal users' economic concerns

Platform: Internet | Author: Robin Goad, Director, Hitwise UK | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 19.06.08

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Although not quite a recession, there's no doubt we're living in uncertain economic times. The web has become a key source of information for people concerned about prices, both rising (food and fuel) and falling (houses).

House prices have become a British preoccupation to rival the weather, although the nature of the obsession has changed as the boom times have been replaced with concern about falling values. There has broadly been a correlation between searches for 'house prices' and prices...

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... themselves. As these have started to decline, so have searches, although those for 'house price crash' have more than trebled over the last 12 months. At the same time, people searching for the basic term 'house prices' are increasingly going to news and media sites to find out the latest bad news, rather than property sites to see how much money they can make.

The price of petrol is going in the opposite direction, of course, and this is something that concerns consumers and business. Searches for 'petrol prices' have shot up since Christmas, reaching an all-time high in May. Petrolprices.com, a site that lets people find the cheapest pump prices in their area, has increased its market share of UK internet visits by 270% over the same period.

Sites like this allow people with a stretched budget to find the best deal, but so far we haven't seen an increase in the use of comparison sites in the broader online retail market. However, consumers are starting to browse more, visiting a greater number of online retailers to find the best price before making a purchase.

The popularity of discount vouchers has also helped fuel the appetites of bargain-hungry consumers. Rather than wait to be offered discounts, people are actively seeking them out. UK searches for 'vouchers' have risen six-fold since the autumn. Over the last three months there were almost 10,000 unique search terms containing the word 'vouchers'. The most popular was 'discount vouchers', while 'money-off vouchers' and 'free vouchers' also appeared in the top ten. In response to this demand, a number of specialist voucher aggregation sites have sprung up and have seen their traffic increase by 40% already this year. Six out of ten of people visiting a voucher site go on to retail website.

Robin Goad is director of research for Hitwise UK