The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were:
1. now 70
2. christian bale
3. global gathering
4. heath ledger
5. batman
6. dark knight
7. womad
8. shipwrecked
9. runehq
10. hamfatter
Four of these terms – ‘christian bale’, ‘heath ledger’, ‘batman’. ‘dark knight’ – related to the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, which was released in the UK last weekend following a record breaking opening in the US. Christian Bale’s arrest for assault has helped him overtake the late Heath Ledger in the search stakes, and the huge amount of press coverage surrounding the movie has certainly benefitted cinemas and other film industry websites. As you can see from the chart below, last week UK Internet traffic to our Entertainment – Movies category reached its highest level this year.

Music was the other big winner, also capturing four of the top 10 terms with ‘now 70′, ‘global gathering’, ‘womad’ and ‘hamfatter’. Last week we highlighted the jump in traffic to Hamfatter’s website following their appearance on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den show. Global Gathering and Womad were music festivals that took place over the weekend. The homepages of both events experienced a jump in traffic last week, although in each case it was lower than last year.
‘now 70′, the fastest moving search term last week, refers to the latest instalment of the long running Now That’s What I Call Music! series of compilation albums. 62% of people searching for term ended up at a music retailer, with Play.com and HMV picking up the most traffic. Many of the searchers were looking for more info on the release, with ‘now 70 track list’, ‘now 70 songs’, ‘now 70 songlist’ and ‘now 70 playlist’ all appearing top 10 search term suggestions list.
‘now 70 cd’ was fifth most popular search term containing the phrase ‘now 70′, but, more worrying for the music industry, ‘now 70 torrent’ was the second. However, even in this age of digital downloads and music piracy, it’s comforting to know that the Now! brand remains as popular as ever. In fact, looking at the chart below, its popularity seems to be increasing. As you can see, I’ve charted searches for the last 10 Now compilations (from 61 – 70) over the last three years, and this most recent release is the most popular yet.

Of the two remaining terms, ‘shipwrecked’ refers to the Channel 4 reality show. Searches for the program shot up last week, although they were lower than at the start of the series in April, as well as the peak last year. The term ‘runehq’ refers to Rune Headquarters, a fan site for the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Runescape. The fan site ranked 41st in our Entertainment – Games category last week, while the game’s homepage has consistently ranked at number one for the last three years.
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