Posts Tagged ‘ Business & Finance ’
The Ontario government surprised many of us a couple of weeks back with a cheque. Before many had seen news coverage of the HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) rebate, the funds had already made their way into bank accounts across the province. Hitwise data reveals that searches including the word “HST” peaked in the week ending [...][ READ MORE ]
Canadian internet searches for loans and credit cards showed gains year over year in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting the financial strain felt by consumers. Year over year, searches for loans increased 19.2% to the first quarter of 2010. Searches for loans showed a quarterly increase (comparing Q4 2009 and Q1 2010) of 42.5% [...][ READ MORE ]
Insurance rates for most Canadians saw a major increase at the start of the year. Insurance was again in the news over the weekend, when Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister, indicated that Ottawa will be cracking down on banks’ efforts to sell insurance products on their websites. Banks have long been restricted from promoting insurance [...][ READ MORE ]
Internet search data can be an excellent input to understand what consumers associate with a brand name. Looking at the words that consumers include with a brand name in a search query provides insight into the products, services and attributes consumers associate wtih that brand. The data, updated weekly is far more timely and cost [...][ READ MORE ]
Who else do your customers bank with and to whom do they compare your offers? Hitwise clickstream data can provide useful insight into a competitive set by looking at where customers go after leaving your site. Last week, nearly half (47%) of visits to Banks and Financial Institutions websites came from other Banks and Financial [...][ READ MORE ]
With stock markets experiencing a rally, it is perhaps unsurprising to also see a recovery in internet searches that contain the words “stock price”. The following chart shows search term breadth for “stock price”. This metric reports the share of all searches that include a keyword or words. As you can see, stock price searches [...][ READ MORE ]
With holiday shopping behind us and the economy in recession, I wondered if we’d see any change in Internet searches for credit cards. Hitwise data indicate a 29% decrease in the share of US Internet searches for “credit cards” year on year in the four weeks to January 10, 2009. I also looked at search [...][ READ MORE ]
Chase recently acquired beleaguered bank Washington Mutual. An article on AdAge.com noted that this deal was very different from normal acquisitions because rather than waiting six or more months for the deal to close, the deal closed the day of the offer and Washington Mutual branches are already being rebranded. With little time for telephone [...][ READ MORE ]
In response to the financial crisis, consumers continue to visit Stocks and Shares websites in droves.Last week I blogged about brokerage websites hitting their highest volume of US visits in three years on Monday, 15th September but this was just the beginning. US Internet visits to Stocks and Shares websites climbed all week to peak [...][ READ MORE ]
With Monday’s news that Lehman was filing to bankruptcy protection (it is now looks set to be acquired) and that Merrill Lynch was being acquired by Bank of America US Internet users stormed Stocks and Shares websites, pushing share of US Internet visits to the single highest daily level in three years. On Monday, visits [...][ READ MORE ]
