Just when we think we’ve managed to catch up to everyone else and have bought the newest piece of equipment the i-world has to offer, Apple goes and does it again: they release another, newer, better version of the latest i-product. Rumour has it that this week, it’s the much anticipated and some might say long overdue iPhone 5.

As anticipation grows ahead of Wednesday’s launch one in every 1000 searches in the UK last week was for iPhone 5. When looking at recent search terms relating to the iPhone we can see that 25% of all online searches relating to the iPhone were specifically about the iPhone 5 as of the week ending 8th September. Similarly, there has been a 42% increase in online searches for ‘iPhone 5’ and a 68.3% increase in ‘Apple iPhone5’ searches in that week alone, both of which coincide with the 33.8% increase in searches for ‘iPhone 5 release date’ for the same time period.

Last year we were bombarded with hopeful rumours that Apple would release an iPhone 5 in 2011. Despite expectations, this was not to be the case and instead we got the iPhone 4S. Likewise, when we finally saw the new iPad hit stores it came as a bit of a surprise to see that it was not in fact an ‘iPad 3’ but just ‘the new iPad.’ Will we see a similar situation with the anticipated release of the new iPhone this week? Already there have been 19 times more searches for the ‘iPhone 5’ than for last year’s model the iPhone 4S in the week ending 8th September so it will be interesting whether Apple change the rules in terms of naming their devices

In terms of sites benefitting from the searches for the iphone 5, the majority of downstream traffic is going to news sites with TechRadar.com being the biggest recipient of traffic receiving 13% of all search traffic relating to the new iphone via their techradar.com and m.techradar.com sites combined, followed closely by the Daily Mail which receives 6% of traffic.

Though the company has most certainly remained very tight lipped over the past few weeks, the iPhone 5 craze has inevitably hit once again and will no doubt take hold over both the consumer, and the major search engines until Apple do it again and release the next ‘new i…’

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