Check out the Digital 180 channel and continue to check back with the Compete Blog for more insights from industry leaders.

Americans are also flocking to volunteer website dedicated to local, part-time opportunities. Volunteer information sites, such as VolunteerMatch.org, DoSomething.org, and 1-800-Volunteer.org have seen similar gains as well. DoSomething.org itself has seen traffic more than double since the 2008 November election.

The average time spent on these sites has also seen increases; despite occasional fluctuations, there has been positive growth in time spent online over the past year. In May,on average, visitors spent over seven minutes on the sites for Volunteer Match, City Year, the PeaceCorps – and nearly twice that on AmeriCorps.gov.

We should not, however, attempt to make a direct correlation between the Obama Administration and increase in UVs to suggest a new found civic duty by the American public. Fellow recent graduates can attest the current state of the economy has made the job hunt quite bit harder, and more of us are looking at alternatives to immediately joining the private sector. We can see this in online traffic patterns as well; for example, the trend in UVs for the AmeriCorps website follows a pattern similar to GradSchools.com over the past six months.

What is also noteworthy, is that in the first week following the announcement of brand Bing, but still prior to the official June 1 launch, 97% of visitors to Bing.com overlapped with Google, compared with only 37% and 2% same time period overlap with Yahoo! and AOL respectively. During launch week, the dramatically larger overlap of Bing Googlers continued, relative to the Bing overlap with Yahoo! and AOL.

The table below shows Bing audience overlap for the weeks both prior and during launch of Bing, together with last week’s Bing audience overlap.

• 97% of the Bing.com audience overlaps with Google Search in the week prior to launch (5/24 – 5/30).
• 30% of the Bing.com audience overlaps with Yahoo! Search during Bing’s launch week (5/31 – 6/1).
• The percent of overlap between the Bing audience with AOL, Google, and Yahoo! has changed little between launch week and last week.

I asked Rich Devine, Director of Search Marketing at ZAAZ, his thoughts on these data. He offered:

“When Microsoft last re-productized their search offering, those we spoke to were adamant that they could compete with Google and win Search in the long run based on the quality and relevancy of search results. I believe their early success with Bing is attributed to the marketing and delivery of a product that is alternative and differentiated, both in terms of interface and results sets. I think Compete data bears this out where we’re seeing tremendous response from users who aren’t necessarily ready to switch engine loyalty – but are willing to compare and consider alternatives. When users search comparatively between Google and Bing – they really will experience and see something different.”

While we can only speculate as to what any of these data really suggest long-term, Bing attracted over 6 million new US consumers to Microsoft search products to experience it for themselves, compared to the prior week’s traffic. The propensity to be interested in (and perhaps aware of) an opportunity to check out a new search experience was far higher among Google searchers than among other searchers. Now the question is whether the Bing experience has translated interest into actual change in search behaviors. We’ll continue tracking this closely.

Then the white glove dropped. MJ’s passing sent a megaton shock through the worldwide pop firmament of Planet Earth, rousing memories of Thriller from billions, even the Haters.

The web was not spared. Visitors shattered records Yahoo! News. Tweets swarmed across Twitter. Video streams flooded the online channels CNN and MTV. And updates exploded at Facebook. As CNN reported, “Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him.”

Michael told the Iran Election to Beat It. Over 24 times more searchers hit top search engines, news sites like CNN and the New York Times and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter on Jackson’s death than on the Iranian election shenanigans.

Where did MJ searchers go? Google. The King of Pop gave back the King of Search its crown.

But the royal succession was not without a few princely hiccups. Twitter disabled the search box and Trending Topics sidebar on profile pages for 4 hours following the “avalanche” of tweets after MJ’s death. And Google blocked MJ searches for 25 minutes, mistaking the incoming torrent as an internationally coordinated cyber-attack of zombie bots.

Fans surged to music, video and retail sites to rekindle memories of his hit songs and music videos to bid farewell to the King of Pop. Yahoo! Music led the way with 45% share of visitors, and YouTube delivered a respectable 23% share.

Meanwhile Michael was still shattering music sales records mors immatura.

But before the Pre could bask in the media spotlight for long, Apple whooshed in two days later to announce its newest iPhone, the 3G S, and that the 3G would sell for as little as $99.

So how has this move affected overall interest in the Pre?

This chart shows the percentage of people viewing the Palm Pre who also looked at the Apple iPhone 3G S online in the same week. Interest in the Pre is defined here as anyone who looked at a Pre-related webpage hosted by Palm or Sprint (or both). Similarly, interest in the iPhone 3G S includes anyone who viewed iPhone 3G S-related web pages at Apple or AT&T (or both). Before the announcement of the iPhone 3G S, interest traffic for the iPhone represents the iPhone 3G.

Here we see that:

• Before the iPhone 3G S was officially announced on June 6th, only about 2.5% of people who looked at the Palm Pre online also viewed the iPhone 3G
• However, once the iPhone 3G S announcement was made, traffic to the iPhone 3G S by Palm Pre shoppers jumped 104%, signaling that the Pre definitely had to share the limelight with the new iPhone 3G S
• By the time the iPhone 3G S was available, just a week after it was announced, consideration of the device by Palm Pre shoppers dropped by about 25%

While the decrease in cross shopping seems to suggest that the iPhone 3G S will not continue to distract Pre shoppers, handset interest data shines a different light on the situation. Interest in the Pre predictably shot up during the week of its launch and the week after as marketing efforts and press coverage reached a fever pitch. However in the second week after launch, Pre interest dropped sharply to levels it had prior to launch, as shown in the chart below.

This suggests that the Pre may indeed have lost its thunder online, though it is unclear at this point if interest has transferred to the iPhone 3G S or simply faded away. Certainly, consideration of both models decreased after the initial excitement of the Palm Pre’s launch and the iPhone 3G S announcement passed, which could indicate that distinct fan bases have emerged for each phone.

Still, much remains to be seen over the next few weeks, as each phone works to establish and sustain its fan base. There are also more opportunities to drive online interest in the Palm Pre to counter the iPhone. Selling the device online is one possibility. Encouraging development of more applications to rival the iTunes App Store by releasing the software development kit more broadly (which Palm says they will do “by the end of this summer”) could also entice consumers.

Challenging the iPhone’s dominance is no small task, but we’ll be watching over the next few months to see if the Palm Pre is the device that will rise to the occasion.

• Online auto insurance shopper volume has increased and price is the key driver of consumer choice
  
  • 90% of those looking to replace an existing policy cite price as the reason
  
• Most consumers apply online and search is the second most used resource in the shopping process trailing only issuer websites
  • 56% of online auto insurance shoppers, who ultimately apply, do so online
  
• Shoppers use search frequently with application rates increasing with number of queries
  • 57% of shoppers perform multiple search queries
  
• Shoppers utilize both brand and non-brand search terms with non-brand driving better conversion
  • Non-brand terms convert at ~2x the rate of brand terms
  
• Search is used throughout the consumer shopping cycle
  • 50% of search referrals occur outside of the conversion session, thus indicating that consumers leverage search at the very early stages of their shopping process when they might not yet be ready to transact
  

In sum, despite the current economic recession we have actually seen online auto insurance shopper volume increase with price being the key driver leading consumers to look for new insurance. We also found that consumers not only use the online channel for auto insurance shopping, but are also most likely to choose this channel to ultimately apply. Finally, our data indicates that search plays a significant role in consumers’ online research for auto insurance. Auto insurance shoppers use search frequently and at multiple stages of their research process.

Please note that a replay of this webinar can be viewed at the following link: http://compete.na3.acrobat.com/autoinsurreplay/

How many people hit the web to get the skinny on MJ? Millions would be a conservative estimate. In fact, Yahoo! News set an all time record of 16.4 million UVs (unique visitors) on Thursday. Celebrity gossip site, tmz.com, received so much traffic that their servers reportedly crashed multiple times. Google was also a victim as the New York Post reported that Google News had to actually block the term “Michael Jackson” to prevent their site from crashing.

Using Compete’s daily online traffic metrics, reach and attention, we’re able to get a real sense of just how many online users in the US were surfing celebrity gossip sites to get their MJ updates.

Reach lets us to see what percentage of U.S. Internet users online visited a particular website on a particular day. Tmz.com, who broke the story of MJ’s death, reached 1.9% of the total US online population on 6/25. That’s a 438% increase from 6/24 and a 527% increase year over year. Other celebrity news sites experienced the same trend – eonline.com (up 213% to 1.3% of total US traffic), people.com (up 70% to .54% of total US traffic), perezhilton.com (up 28% to .45% of total US traffic), and ew.com (up 49% to .21% of total US traffic). These five sites alone reached 4.42% of all U.S. Internet users online.

Attention is a metric that considers the collective time all U.S. Internet users spend online and calculates what percentage of that time was spent on a given website on a particular day. Once again, tmz.com showed the greatest increase on 6/25, up 478% over the day before and 272% year over year to .037% of all time spent online. However, people.com garnered the most attention of all the celebrity sites on that day with .053% of total time spent online (up 71% from 6/24 and 50% year over year). The other celebrity sites also showed increases - eonline.com (up 175% to .032% of total US traffic), perezhilton.com (up 28% to .45% of total US traffic), and ew.com (up 49% to .21% of total US traffic).

Although some may credit MJ’s never-ending fame to his character flaws ridden with tabloid headlines, his musical career was undoubtedly flooded with accomplishments – 2 time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, 13 time Grammy Award winner, and over 750 million records sold worldwide to name a few. The polarizing effect of his personal life’s blunders and undeniable talent obviously kept audiences captivated and will continue to captivate them for years to come. His passing even added another notch to his belt – “king of the Internet”… for a day.

For more digital marketing insights from various industry leaders, check out the Digital 180 channel and check back with the Compete blog for updates.

But what was really happening in Iran and on Twitter? Some sobering thoughts suggest that Twitter may not have been that widely embraced inside Iran. Other reports suggest that the government has been actively suppressing digital resistance.

Meanwhile, a few terrifying and sad reports have leaked out, like protest violence photos and the Neda video, displaying the immediacy and emotional impact of social media.

Outside Iran, these scant bits have whipped the disenfranchised Diaspora and simpatico millions to take to the streets and social media streams. Starved for the latest and eager to commune, they have pollinated the web with millions of bits of Iran Election information – on leading search engines, news sites, wikis, social networks, sharing services and real time search engines.

Taking a web-wide view, Compete looked at searchers on “Iran+Election” at over 25 sites like Google, the New York Times, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, real-time search startup OneRiot and, of course, Twitter.

It’s no surprise that Twitter claimed 55% of searchers the week after the Election, given all the media hoopla. But note that Google was the leading search property in the days leading up to the event, the day itself and the day after. Searchers used Google to learn more about the event before it happened and Twitter to get the latest on the fallout.

As OneRiot has written about, there’s a bit of an outstanding question among Google, Twitter and others: who will win real time search?

Search doesn’t equate to media consumption. With Iran in the headlines on nytimes.com and streaming down Twitter apps as #IranElection, people don’t need to search for the latest. But many will search nonetheless, especially the highly engaged.

That’s according to BillShrink.com, a site that tells you which wireless carrier could save you money when you enter information about your cell phone usage, what you are paying, and where you use the phone. The site offers a similar service for saving money on credit card bills, as well as helping users find the cheapest gas. To give you a better sense of what the BillShrink.com results look like, I’ve included a screenshot of my top result.

BillShrink.com has recently been given a lot of publicity due to its relationship with the wireless carrier T-Mobile, as T-Mobile consistently - though not always- comes up as the best value for a wireless shopper. Billshrink.com is prominently featured in T-Mobile’s new online and TV ad campaign (alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones) that encourages anyone and everyone to use Billshrink.com to see which service and plan will save them the most money while providing them with ample coverage.

So how has this relationship affected T-Mobile and BillShrink.com? Is it a mutually beneficial relationship, or is one side reaping more benefits? We can start by looking at traffic to BillShrink.com over the past year.

• From this chart we can see that T-Mobile appears to have had a large impact on traffic to BillShrink.com. Though T-Mobile started including links on its site for BillShrink.com in March, it’s clear the largest impact occurred when it began its broader campaign in May.
• In addition to an increase in traffic, we can further tell this relationship with T-Mobile has impacted Billshrink.com as 43% of visitors to Billshrink.com used the Wireless Plan area of the site in May, compared to only 22% using the wireless area in March.

Looking at data on Compete.com, we found that the T-Mobile campaign seems to be giving Billshrink.com a significant boost: the carrier accounted for 12.8% of all referrals to BillShrink.com, and was the destination site for 7.4% of all visitors to BillShrink.com.

All this data certainly tells me that the T-Mobile relationship has benefited BillShrink.com. T-Mobile, however, is the one that went out on a limb by telling consumers to check this site and see which carrier will save them the most money. So has this campaign benefited T-Mobile too? To get a sense of the impact, we looked at how many T-Mobile shoppers are also visiting BIllShrink.com.

This chart is looking at the volume of T-Mobile.com visitors also visiting BillShrink.com, represented by the blue bars and mapped to the right axis. The diamonds represent the % of overall T-Mobile.com traffic that also used BillShrink.com in the given month, and is mapped to the right axis. So what does this chart show us?

• Since the relationship began, there has been an increase in T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com, shown by the blue bars. Unfortunately for T-Mobile, even with a 211% M-O-M increase in the volume of visitors visiting both sites in May, this still represents less than 2% of overall traffic, shown by the diamonds.
• Breaking this down a little further, we found that 49% of the T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com in May were T-Mobile Customers, which is likely not the target group T-Mobile is hoping will use BillShrink.com.

To further investigate the impact on T-Mobile, I also took a look at how many of the T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com went on to purchase within the same month (either a phone and plan or an upgrade) on T-Mobile.com. The results were negligible, indicating sending T-Mobile shoppers to BillShrink.com has not yet had an impact on shoppers purchasing on T-Mobile.com.

So it seems as though this relationship is mainly benefiting only one side, but there is an important additional factor we should not ignore. I’ve been in three T-Mobile retail stores lately, and all of them have computers set up for shoppers to use BillShrink.com (though we should note we cannot track activity on BillShrink.com from T-Mobile stores). I imagine this is a very powerful tool for T-Mobile Sales reps, as it is hard for a shopper to argue that they need to continue to shop when BillShrink.com is showing them T-Mobile will save them the most money. I have a hunch that BillShrink.com is actually having a larger impact on offline sales than we’ve seen online so far.

This campaign only truly began in May, so in the coming months we will be watching to see if it starts to have a bigger impact on T-Mobile.com sales. Still, T-Mobile’s use of Billshrink.com in its campaign was creative, and in the long run will likely benefit the carrier as T-Mobile continues to promote it heavily and more shoppers continue to use BillShrink.com. T-Mobile has found a way to promote its value and its growing coverage area while using an independent company to validate its claims.

So, now that I know I could save $700 over the next two years by switching to T-Mobile, am I going to? To be honest, I replaced my 1st generation iPhone with the 3rd generation iPhone last Friday. For me, more went into my wireless phone and plan purchase decision than just the cost.

BillShrink.com may not have convinced me to switch, but I have no doubt that for many wireless shoppers finding the best value is the most important thing in their wireless phone and plan decision, and BillShrink.com will likely help them in that decision.

Compete’s recently released list of the top 10 Coupon and Deal sites shows a changing landscape over the past year as economic woes have weighed on consumers’ willingness to make purchases.

Among the top sites, Coupons.com is still the clear-cut leader, however the gap has closed since last year and the big mover on the list is RetailMeNot.com. RetailMeNot’s collaborative approach to coupon and deal hunting has helped it stand out in a crowded field of coupon sites and made it top-of-mind for shoppers. Consumers not only find deals on the site, but rate each deal code and share what they find, driving the best deals to the head of the list. Over 50,000 consumers share coupon codes on the site each month. In addition, the site jumped from sixth to third in our rankings over the past year, with nearly 200% growth in visitors. RetailMeNot captured 18% of all searches for the term ‘coupon code’ over the past three months, 4X higher than its closest competitor (couponcabin.com).

Traffic to state unemployment claims filing domains has, not surprisingly, jumped drastically over the past year in areas hardest hit by the recession.  Markets affected most by the real estate implosion, such as California and Arizona (eapply4ui.edd.ca.gov & egov.azdes.gov ), as well as those facing down the automotive meltdown, such as Ohio and Michigan ( unemployment.ohio.gov & bwuc-claims.state.mi.us ), are seeing UVs to their claims gateways explode.

While traffic to those claims filing sites alone is certainly not evidence of conversion (actually filing a claim), the trends post-September 2008 are clearly apparent.  Additionally, Unique Visitor trends to sites of populous states, like California’s eapply4ui.edd.ca.gov, are clearly behaving as leading indicators of trends to job search sites like Monster.com; patterns of traffic to California’s site appear to lag Monster by about a month or two.

So that’s what got this site on my radar which has been operational since mid 2006 and was closely involved with making widgets for Myspace and is the most prevalent widget maker (in terms of downloads) for Facebook since December 2007. (I don’t know what I would do without Wikipedia). Well since then they have teamed up with a bunch of the big time social networks and increased the site traffic year-over-year from 5 million unique visitors in April ’08 to almost 29 million in April ’09, over 5x!

I’m sure there are a ton of great widgets that you can use to pimp up your profile and continue to push Facebook attention off the charts but the hot new offering is their “Best Slideshow Ever!” app. In the name of responsible journalism and morbid curiosity, it was my duty to try out the tool. After careful examination I was pleasantly surprised with the results. As always, our readers have the final say on whether or not it can produce The Best Slideshow Ever but for my test show I think it did the trick. Let us know what you think of RockYou.com.

On the web, movie advertisers love big, bold banners on popular movie sites like Yahoo! Movies, Fandango and MySpace. Here at Compete, we’ve got an eye on the MySpace homepage and saw some great looking creative in May.

In a recent post, we saw how 72% of MySpace visitors saw the homepage – the crown jewel in MySpace’s strategy to sell advertising like portals. That’s a huge volume of impressions, but how valuable are they really?

To get a better sense, we looked at same day viewthrough or the rate at which ad-exposed unique visitors visited the movie page.

Terminator Salvation clearly kicked MySpace movie ad butt! At 0.80% Viewthrough, Terminator outperformed the average by 2.7x.

Fractions of a percent may not seem like much, but keep in mind that MySpace had nearly 57 million unique visitors last month – that translates to tens of thousands of ad viewthroughs everyday.

Some fans just can’t get enough. We also took a look at those MySpace users who saw a movie ad and decided to do a little research.

Ah, the Trekkies. Of course, geekdom went crazy when Star Trek came to the silver screen last month. MySpace geeks (not an oxymoron) were no exception, with .11% of ad exposed visitors also heading warp speed over to IMDB.

As the biggest movie research site on the net, it’s not exactly, “Going boldy where no man has gone before.” But with at 3.2x the average for other movies on MySpace in May, it certainly got us thinking…

What if both winners joined up for a sequel? “Terminator Trekkers.” Now that’s one movie that MySpacers would pay to see!

Palm and Sprint drove substantial traffic to their web sites with the announcement of the Pre at CES in January, in a move similar to Apple’s unveiling of the first generation iPhone at MacWorld two years earlier. Nearly 400,000 people visited Pre-related pages on Sprint.com and/or Palm.com the week of the announcement.

After months of speculation from industry analysts and consumers, Sprint and Palm announced on May 19th that the Pre would be available for purchase on June 6th. As one might expect, visitors to the Pre pages on Sprint.com and Palm.com jumped after many weeks of flat traffic and jumped again the week the device finally became available for purchase.

This chart shows the number of people researching the Pre and the original iPhone, indexed to the device’s launch week. As you can see, the Pre may be getting a healthy amount of interest from consumers online, but it doesn’t rival the interest seen in the original iPhone launch. Likewise, Sprint and Palm’s traffic spike the week of the Pre launch didn’t match the massive jump Apple experienced upon the iPhone’s release.

• Aggregate traffic for the Pre from both Sprint and Palm’s web sites increased 84% the week of launch to over 475,000 unique visitors.
• Traffic to Apple.com’s iPhone content increased 102% the week of the iPhone launch to over 750,000 unique visitors. Note that this is just traffic to Apple.com – this number would be even higher if AT&T’s traffic was included.

Apple’s relentless hype machine and strong brand equity played significant roles in this major increase, but a significant factor may have simply been the relative sizes of the websites involved, as you can see in the following chart.

The truth is that Palm.com does not attract visitors at comparable levels to Apple.com, and, to a lesser extent, the same can be said about Sprint.com compared to Wireless.ATT.com. However, considering the relative sizes of these sites, Palm and Sprint did a solid job at driving interest in the Pre and are already reaping the benefits of this highly anticipated launch.

The next real challenge will be sustaining interest and sales of the device – one great sales week hasn’t propelled any of the previous iPhone challengers to the top of the heap.

Check out the Digital 180 channel and check back with the Compete blog to hear about more exciting changes from leading marketers across different industries.

Last month, Wal-Mart attracted more visitors than Target to its website and 47% of Wal-Mart visitors looked at a product compared to 31% of Target visitors. However, among shoppers who viewed a product, Target had a higher shopping cart interaction rate and conversion rate.

Despite the slight lead in conversions, more Target customers abandon their carts than Wal-Mart shoppers. 47% of shoppers who begin checking out at Target do not complete their purchases, where as 35% of shoppers at Wal-Mart abandon their carts.
In general, Target leads in purchase rate and Wal-Mart boasts a smaller shopping cart abandonment rate. But how do more loyal consumers shop online?

Retailer credit card holders represent some of the most loyal, and valuable, customers. Among shoppers who accessed their credit card accounts, conversion rate for Wal-Mart shoppers edges ahead of Target to a 14% rate compared to Target’s 13%. Wal-Mart shopping cart abandonment does not change much, averaging 33% of shoppers. Target’s abandonment rate, however, drops 18% from 47% to 38%, narrowing the gap between it and Wal-Mart’s rate. It’s no surprise that competition is extremely fierce between these two rivals and I expect things to heat up even more as retailers gear up for back-to-school and the holiday season.

To hear more insights from some of the top marketers in various industries, check out the Digital 180 channel and check back with the Compete blog for new interviews.

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.