In chapter four of Click, I discuss our desire to improve ourselves at the beginning of the year and what Internet data can tell us about our resolve. In the book I examine diet searches which are one of the most predictable annual search patterns (peaks during the first week of January, hits the low-point every Thanksgiving).
Today, as I prepare to go the gym early to beat the mad rush for a bike in spin class (a phenomenon that also occurs the first week of every year) I’m wondering about Internet patterns around working out.
To start this analysis, I created a custom category in Hitwise of all the official websites for large national fitness chains (24hourfitness.com, Goldsgym.com, Crunch.com, to name a few). While not as smooth as the diet search curve, visits to fitness websites demonstrate the same New Year’s surge. In the chart below, you can see the daily visit pattern for last New Year’s.

Using our new capability of comparing the demographics of the same custom category over time, I measured the male/female ratio of visitors to gym websites for the four weeks ending December 27, 2008 compared to mid-year (four weeks ending June 6, 2008). In the June time-frame, the breakdown was 18.6% male visitors and 81.4% female visitors. If we fast-forward to the weeks leading up to the beginning of the year, that ration changes to 49.6% male and 50.4% female.
Checking previous years, it appears that men have a greater propensity to visit gym websites during the New Year’s rush, and by mid-year women return to dominate the category.
This isn’t the only change in gym website demographics. There’s a big shift in income and age that occurs during New Year’s. Care to guess how these two variables move during the resolution-fest?
Check back here this week as I continue my analysis.