Fans of the TV series Lost were no doubt thrilled for the return of the show last Thursday night, in spite of a potentially shorter season due to the writers’ strike. Curious and obsessive fans (me included) have been visiting fan sites to read about the upcoming episodes and review information revealed in past seasons. Traffic to a custom category of Lost Fan Sites & Forums increased 175% for the week ending Feb 2nd, 2008 compared to the previous week. The spike is significantly higher than the increase in traffic to the category during the week of the season 3 premiere, where there was an 88% increase in market share of visits (week ending Oct 7th, 2006) from the previous week. Lostpedia attracted the largest share of visits among the Lost Fan Sites & Forums for the week ending Feb 2nd, 2008.

Two new websites emerged prior to season 4 – flyoceanicair.com and find815.com, accompanied by outdoor marketing campaigns in select cities (that will be serviced by the fictional airline listed in a press release on flyoceanicair.com) through billboards and vans. The billboards & vans promoted the Oceanic Air brand and were then “vandalized” with the find815.com URL. Photos of the campaign could be found on various fan sites and posted on Flickr. Both websites then appeared in a commercial during the premiere of new show Eli Stone, which debuted immediately after Lost (brilliant tactic to drive viewership or at least encourage Lost fans to record the show).
Each of the websites experienced traffic spikes after the airing of the commercial. Traffic to find815.com jumped 65% on Friday, February 1st following the premiere as many time shifting DVR & Tivo viewers watched the commercial and news of the websites spread across the Lost fan sites.

Search behavior on the term ‘lost’ showcases the collective curiosity about what will happen this season and beyond with plenty of searches spoilers and ‘how lost will end’.