RECENT AUSTRALIAN ONLINE BEHAVIOUR

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Recent Australian Online Behaviour

Melbourne, September 5, 2005
Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports on recent areas of online interest for Australian Internet users of late. Trends have shown that there have been significant increases in online searches and visits relating to hurricane Katrina, oil prices and Sony Playstation Portable. Whilst online interest in these categories is obviously event driven, Hitwise uncovers what is foremost in the minds of Australians when they research these topics online.

Wild weather

As the US National Hurricane Centre issued a statement on August 23 regarding hurricane Katrina and President Bush declared a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana on August 28, Australians turned to the Internet to keep a watchful eye on the movement of this unfolding natural disaster. Australian visits to The Weather Channel US - www.weather.com grew by over 140% between the 28th and 29th August.

Some of the more popular search terms used by Australians to find out more about the severity of the disaster were:

'hurricane', 'the hurricane', 'hurricane center', 'hurricane katrina' and 'national hurricane center'. After using search queries containing the term 'hurricane', 73% of Australian's visited Government websites and a further 23% visited News & Media related websites.

Oil Prices

With the price of oil rising over recent weeks, so too have online searches relating to this topic. Hitwise found that the use of the search term 'oil' within search engines increased by over 790% between the week ending 14/5/05 and 25/6/05. The use of the search term 'oil' has increased by approximately 700% between June 2004 and June 2005.

The search term 'oil price' was the 6th most popular search term containing the word 'price' over the past 12 weeks. Website www.bloomberg.com was the top domain receiving traffic as a result of Australians searching with the term 'oil price'.

Retail

The lead up to last weeks launch of Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP) also had a flow on effect online, with Australian gaming enthusiasts scouring the web for all types of PSP information. Some of the top search terms which included the term 'psp' were:

'psp review'

'psp hacks'

'psp movies'

'psp accessories'

'psp software'

'free psp'

'psp price'

Use of the search term 'psp' on its own within search engines has increased by over 800% between the week ending June 14 and week ending August 27.

Over 29% Australians who used the term 'psp' went directly to www.us.playstation.com followed by over 5.6% going to gaming website psp.ign.com then a further 5.3% went to online auction and classifieds website www.ebay.com.au .

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximise the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.au

For media enquiries, please contact:

James Borg

james.borg@hitwise.com

Tel: +613 8530 2420