As we highlighted a couple of weeks ago when discussing Google’s holiday logos, one of the delights of Hitwise search data is when it reveals something expected. Seeing the phrase ‘kidulthood’ appear in our list of fast moving search terms last week was one such example. I was expecting to see ‘adulthood’, the new film by Noel Clarke, but not his earlier film. In fact, as you can see from the chart below, searches for both increased recently.

Adulthood is a rarity in British cinema: a movie sequel (to Kidulthood, no less). If the search data is anything to go by, it has clearly been popular. However, the interesting thing that this search data illustrates is the beneficial halo effect of the sequel on the original film. As you can see, a combination of promotion for the Kidulthood DVD and the hype surrounding Adulthood has led to a surge of interest in the original film, with searches for ‘kidulthood’ exceeding the volume when the film was originally released in early 2006.