Visits to Grocery & Alcohol Websites Surge by 20%

Top Recipe Search Terms

Melbourne - 21 December 2007 - According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, visits to Grocery & Alcohol websites surged by 20% comparing 6 October 2007 and 15 December 2007, as Christmas day draws increasingly closer. Alcohol websites in particular enjoyed a spike in traffic of 64%.

Coles was the leading player in the Shopping & Classifieds - Grocery & Alcohol industry for the week ending 15 December 2007 with 11.64% share, followed closely by Woolworths Australia with 11.54% share. Also amongst the top 5 websites were Aldi Australia, Woolworths HomeShop and Dan Murphy's with 9.19%, 4.78% and 4.76% share respectively.

High-growth players leading up to Christmas this year include Aldi Australia, which increased its market share by 15%, comparing weeks ending 6 October 2007 and 24 November 2007; and Dan Murphy's which surged by 32%, comparing weeks ending 8 December 2007 and 15 December 2007. Search Engines were a contributing factor in growth to both the Aldi Australia and Dan Murphy's websites, accounting for 33.92% and 59.48% of upstream traffic respectively for the week ending 15 December 2007. Traffic to the Dan Murphy's website consisted of 79.23% new visitors and 20.77% returning visitors for the week ending 15 December 2007; compared to 40.91% new visitors and 50.09% returning visitors to Aldi Australia.

Recipe-related searches have been a key source of traffic to the Coles website. Leading terms include 'trife', 'prawn salad', 'creamy pasta salad', 'apricot chicken', 'tuna bake', 'seafood platter', 'vegetable slice', 'vegetarian lasagne', 'chilli prawns' and 'eggplant parmigana'. Branded searches conversely, dominated traffic to the Woolworths website; with 'woolworths liquor', 'woolworths catalogue' and 'woolworths specials' amongst the top searches.

Christmas-related search terms that have driven traffic to the Grocery & Alcohol industry include 'christmas hampers', 'david jones christmas hampers', 'chrisco hampers', 'christmas wine gifts', 'christmas chocolates', 'christmas cake', 'decorated christmas cookies' and 'christmas icecream'. Alcohol-related search terms were dominated by brand names, with 'dan murphys' enjoying the fastest growth rate for the week ending 15 December 2007.

Hitwise Demographics indicates that it is predominantly female Internet users who are visiting the Grocery & Alcohol industry online, accounting for 65.25% of traffic for the 12 week period ending 15 December 2007. This represents a 9.64% swing to female users compared to the Shopping & Classifieds industry average. Hitwise Lifestyle data further indicates that users to Grocery & Alcohol websites are from the wealthiest segment online; "Leading Lifestyles" are 15% more likely to visit the industry than the online population average. Other consumer groups likely to visit the Grocery & Alcohol industry are early adopters, educated singles and couples, and seniors.

Visits to Grocery & Alcohol Websites

For more information or media queries, contact Rheika Tompkins at press.au@hitwise.com

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

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