HITWISE UK RETAIL UPDATE 

Hitwise predicts visits to retail sites will grow 8% this Christmas. 

Search Engines will account for 35% of category visits. 

                                                                    
London, 27th September 2006

Hitwise UK, the leader in online competitive intelligence, today released its predictions for the 2006 Christmas retail season online based on 2 years of internet usage data of 8.43 million UK internet users.

“We are optimistic that the strong growth we have seen to date in 2006 heralds a busy season for online retailing”, commented Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK. “We project that the share of visits to retailers will increase by 8% over last year, an even stronger rate of growth than experienced in the busy 2005 season. This growth is driven by confidence in online shopping, on-time delivery, ubiquitous use of search engines and referrals from social networks. Search engines are expected to deliver 35.5% of category visits in 2006, an 18% increase over 2005.”

Predictions are based on two years of historical data including share of category visits, past growth rates, peak weeks for visits and analysis of past clickstream data. Predictions for category growth are based on analysis of the Hitwise UK Retail 100 Index, a custom category that includes 100 of the top online retailers based on share of UK visits in August 2006.

Share of category visits will rise 8% year on year:

- The Hitwise UK Retail 100 Index grew 7% year-on-year comparing the peak weeks for visits in 2005 and 2004.
- We predict that the Index will average 5% of all UK internet visits in December 2006, representing an 8% increase over December of 2005.
- This also represents a 20% increase in share of visits comparing August to December 2006.

More Last Minute Shopping:

- In 2005, visits to the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category peaked the week to 10th December, one week later than the peak in 2004.
- Hitwise predicts that consumers will continue to show confidence in on-time delivery, with visits to retail websites peaking over the weeks of 9th December and 16th December.
                                                                                            
Search Engines, Led by Google and Yahoo!, Will Continue to Make Gains as a Source of Referrals:

- In December 2005, search engines accounted for 30% of visits to retailers and in the past eight months that has risen to 34%. Year-on-year in August, search engines accounted for 22% more visits to retail websites.
- Hitwise predicts that search engines will continue to grow as a source of visits to Shopping and Classifieds sites, and will account for 35% of visits in December 2006.
- That growth will be driven by Google and Yahoo! Search. Google accounted for 20% of visits to retail websites in December 2005 and that had risen to 25.5% in August. Yahoo! accounted for 2.2% of visits to retail websites in August, up 48% since December.

Social Networks - and MySpace in Particular - Will Become an Important Source of Referrals:

- Hitwise predicts that share of visits from social networks, such as MySpace and Bebo, will exceed 3% in December 2006.
- Share of upstream visits from social networks to retailers has increased 22% year-on-year in August, led by MySpace. This growth is likely to slow into Christmas as it did in 2005. However, with more advertisers looking to opportunities presented by the likes of MySpace and Bebo, social networks will become an increasingly important source of visits to retailers.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients 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 captures the anonymous online usage, search, and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends and statistics, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the HitwiseData Centerat www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

Tel: 020 7378 3619