Online search behaviour was dictated this weekend by the snow. With the flakes falling thick and fast on Saturday there were huge spikes in traffic to news, weather, travel and social networking sites.

With reports of up to five inches of snow falling in the space of an hour on Saturday, aircraft at many of the UK’s major airports were grounded. Heathrow in particular was forced to cancel many of its flights, causing a 167% increase in visits to the Heathrow Airport website over the week.

Visits to the travel industry as a whole increased by 31.1% between Friday 17 December and Saturday 18 December as people started searching for flight cancelations and alternative routes to their winter holiday destinations. Meanwhile, visits to weather sites increased by 12.9% for the most recent updates on the snow.
Although the News and Media category increased its visits by 7.9% between the Friday and Saturday social media was also responsible for driving a lot of the information to consumers over the weekend. Of the top search terms on Sunday 19 December driving traffic to Twitter, two of the top 10 concerned Heathrow airport.

Whilst traffic spiked for news, travel and weather, the snow had a negative impact on the online retail category. With so many shoppers unable to complete their Christmas shopping you might have expected a late boon in traffic to the online retailers. In fact the opposite is true, with a 16.3% decrease in traffic since the previous week. With the Christmas deadline looming so close, and more snow expected, shoppers are clearly worried about whether their deliveries will arrive on time.

The snow has clearly raised concerns about whether deliveries will get through, with a 5% increase in all delivery-related searches in the last week. One thing that continues to grow despite the decline in online retail traffic is searches for VAT. In the last week VAT-related searches have grown by 2% and searches have gone up by 15% in the last three months.
With VAT rates due to increase in January shoppers are looking for deals to make their purchases before the New Year deadline. All of which points to a bumper post-Christmas period in online sales. For the last two years Boxing Day has been the biggest single day in online retail and the VAT increase this year will give shoppers the added incentive to buy early. Boxing Day 2010 could be the biggest ever! We’ll be tracking the results as they happen so keep following the blog over the Christmas period.
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