Profile: GM, Global Research Hitwise Bill Tancer is the General Manager, Global Research at Hitwise. Bill brings 12+ years of marketing, market research and corporate strategy experience to Hitwise. As the GM for Global Research, Bill leads a team of research analysts in the US, UK and Australia, providing cutting-edge research and insight into online consumer behavior and the application of online competitive intelligence. Bill's analysis of the online landscape has been quoted extensively in the press, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, Television Week, Forbes Online and CNN Money. Bill is a frequent guest on CNBC, and has been interviewed on MSNBC, NPR, Dow Jones Marketwatch, CNN Radio and CBS Radio. Bill speaks frequently as a keynote and main agenda speaker at industry events such as Web 2.0 EXPO, Searchnomics 2007, J.P. Morgan Global Internet Conference, O'Reilly Money: Tech Conference, Columbia Business School Innovative Marketing Conference, Shop.org, Internet Retailer, Search Engine Strategies, E-tail, Ad:tech and PhocusWright. Additionally, he is the author of the weekly online column for TIME, "The Science of Search." He was also named Television Week's "12 to Watch" for 2008. Bill has served on the board of directors for SEMPO and he is currently on the advisory board for the PEW Internet and American Life Project. Prior to joining Hitwise, Bill has led market research and strategy teams at LookSmart, Zaplet, NBC Internet and Pacific Bell Internet Services. Bill has also covered the Internet sector for Gartner Group as a senior technology marketplace consultant. Bill has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Florida in Quantitative Management and a Juris Doctorate degree from the Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University.
Haiti Earthquake Relief – News Sites are Major Traffic Driver
With the devastating earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday, you would expect that traffic to charitable websites would register an increase. The chart below shows daily visits to the top 325 sites in our Community – Humanitarian websites. While search continues to be the #1 driver of traffic to charitable websites, news websites registered the greatest [...]
Bing – Rising Success (rate)
Yesterday we published our monthly search volume statistics, and as expected Google continues to dominate the space with 72.3% of all U.S. searches executed, while Yahoo! Search and Bing shares were at 14.8% and 8.9% respectively. A far more interesting stat is the positive movement that we’ve seen in Bing’s success rate. At Experian Hitwise, [...]
Facebook Hits #1 on Christmas and New Year’s Day
The main Google page has been ranked the most visited site on a daily basis for U.S. Internet users. That statement has held true for 364 days of 2009. Google’s dominance of “all category” visits was disrupted when Facebook visits surged on Christmas Day. Facebook was able, albeit by a slighter margin, to recapture the [...]
News Corp. – If You de-Index Will They Still Come?
Two weeks ago we posted on Rupert Murdoch’s threat to block Google from Indexing News Corp. content. While at first it seemed as though Murdoch was merely posturing with hypotheticals, reports continue to indicate that News Corp. is seriously considering choosing Bing as the exclusive “indexer” of their news content. While our data hasn’t changed [...]
News Corp. Google-less?
Rupert Murdoch made an interesting statement in a Sky News interview today, when asked about news content available through search engines such as Google, Murdoch says he would consider blocking Google from indexing News Corp.’s news websites such as the Wall Street Journal. Of course it would naturally follow that I would immediately chart the [...]
Twitter Revisited – in More than 140 Characters
A quick update from my Twitter post from last month. I had the pleasure of speaking at two excellent conferences this week, iMedia Breakthrough and Digital Media West. During the Q&A of my talk at Digital Media, I was asked about my views of Twitter’s staying power versus competition from Facebook. I think this charts [...]
Twittered Out?
On the heels of yesterday’s rumor that Twitter is close to securing an additional $100 million in financing, which would place the company’s valuation in the $1 billion range, I decided to take a quick look at Twitter’s market share of visits to see if the hype is matched by site traffic. It should be [...]
Free Shipping – Vendor and Consumer Perspectives
Our sister company Experian CheetahMail released an insightful white paper on the topic of free shipping email offers (download the paper here). Among several interesting findings, the paper provides some seasonality data on the percentage of clients that sent free shipping offers by quarter. “As expected, the sharpest increase occurred at the end of the [...]
Swine Flue, Gripe Suina and Hitwise Brazil
Greetings from Sao Paulo. I’m in town this week to attend today’s launch of Hitwise Brazil, a new offering from Serasa Experian Marketing Services. In preparation for this event, I’ve been immersed in studying how Brazilian Internet behavior is similar and different from the other markets that we serve. While I’ve written before about bird [...]
Bing + Yahoo! Now Equals 26% of Search Market
Two weeks ago we posted about the potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! . Now that the deal is official, the latest search numbers tell us that Google has 70.6% of all U.S. query volume while the combined Bing and Yahoo! Search now comprise 26% of all U.S. searches, leaving only 3.4% for the other [...]