The week before the Olympics started, 17-year-old swimmer Lia Neal held the first spot with 21.71% of searches among all the 2012 U.S. athletes. During that same time, hurdler Lolo Jones leaped into the top ten with 1.93% of searches.

Source: Experian Hitwise

During the week of the opening ceremonies, Jones jumped 21 percentage points to the number one spot, accounting for 22.75% of searches among the athletes. With the mounting build-up set to take place over the next week at the aquatic center, swimmer Ryan Lochte took second over his teammate Michael Phelps in the race for most popular online, with 8.6% and 7.79% of searches respectively during the week ending July 28.

Source: Experian Hitwise

After the first week of competition was over and Phelps made Olympic history as the most decorated Olympian ever, just like his medal count his online popularity rose to number one with an increase of ten percentage points from the previous week. Searches for Michael Phelps accounted for 17.86% of searches for U.S. Olympians during the week ending August 4. Despite his popularity with the ladies, Lochte fell off the top ten list; he was defeated by some of the female swimmers who powered their way into the week’s top ten searched.  Also appearing were several members of the “Fab 5” – the women’s gymnastics team.

Source: Experian Hitwise

At the end of the second week of competition, Lolo Jones reclaimed her number one position with 12.54% of searches for the week ending August 11. Swimming events ended and track and field events took over this week, which is reflected in Phelps’ drop from the top ten and sprinter Tyson Gay’s appearance in the number two spot with an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous week. Other stand out performers this week were  gymnast McKayla Maroney – whose “not impressed” photo after winning a silver medal went viral – and Hope Solo from the U.S. Women’s soccer team; both made it in the top five.  Beach volleyball star Misty May-Traynor also held on in the top five, although she dropped from the number three position she held the previous week.

Source: Experian Hitwise

These search results help athletes and marketers alike. Now that the athletes continue onto publicity tours and endorsement deals, they have a chance to make a name for themselves and their sport, and earn a good paycheck. For marketers it’s an opportunity to see who captured the interest of Americans and might be a good candidate for endorsement. Even if you won’t be hiring an Olympian, this kind of search intelligence can help you learn popular terms and benefit from those that drive traffic in your industry.

Which Olympians will sustain popularity as excitement of the games subsides? We’ll continue our coverage to find out.

For more online consumer trends, visit the Hitwise Online Trend Center.

Sites that are effectively receiving more traffic from Vantage Score A users are Discover, American Express and Fidelity Investments, as they have a higher propensity to visit these sites than the online population. Chase Banking stands out in attracting consumers with the highest credit worthiness when compared against the overall online population.  Common commercial bank sites such as SunTrust, TD and Capital One are  more likely to be visited by the online population than the VantageScore A consumers.

Source: Experian AudienceView

The top search terms of VantageScore A consumers that drive traffic to the Banks & Financial Institutions  are very different than the general population. The top search term ‘mortgage calculator’ received the highest share of clicks bringing these consumers to banking sites during the 12 weeks ending July 14, 2012. They are also searching for custom ‘log in’ pages. Banks and financial institutions may want to consider in enhancing their site with this feature in order to attract more high credit consumers.

Source: Experian AudienceView

When trended over time, the term ‘mortgage calculator’ reveals more search volume from May – June this year.  With recent news that fixed U.S. mortgage rates fell to new record lows – VantageScore A consumers are seeking out information with potential interest in refinancing or may be prospective home buyers.

Source: Experian AudienceView

The key for success is to offer relevant products, outstanding service and timely marketing messages to generate qualified response to offers. Using precise segment insights, lenders can intelligently and effectively target eligible and profitable consumers for acquisition and existing account management strategies.

We decided to take a look into the online habits of the segment of Family Travelers to understand how their search activity for travel may differ from the online population. Before visiting the websites within the Travel Agencies category, they had a much higher propensity to search terms related to ‘deals’, ‘all-inclusive’ and ‘packages’. Agency names that they seemed to favor more than the online population include Bookit.com, Priceline and Expedia during the 12 weeks ending June 30, 2012 .

To identify what Family Travelers are interested in and care about – we can look at what types of sites they visit before travel sites. Not too surprisingly, children’s sites topped the list but when you look further there is an array of sporting & gaming sites –skateboarding/skating, watersports and entertainment sites including wrestling – that they had a higher propensity to visit than the online population. Activity based vacations, excursions and related offerings would likely catch their eye.

To capture the attention and summer travel bookings from Family Travelers it’s critical to focus on value/deal oriented messages, and you can find them online with highly targeted advertising on children and youth oriented websites.

Though MIB 3, Marvel’s The Avengers and Snow White and the Huntsman may have dominated the summer box office in overall gross, smaller pictures have the opportunity to build into wider release and benefit from a more geographically-concentrated use of marketing dollars. This platform release strategy is proving to be highly effective for Focus Features’ Moonrise Kingdom. Indeed, the volume of clicks for the search terms “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Wes Anderson” in the Los Angeles designated marketing area (DMA) are more than 5 times larger than for the online population as a whole. Whereas relevant searches began to climb in LA in March, “Moonrise Kingdom” searches for the online population kicked off just before Memorial Day weekend and are beginning to rise.

Source: Experian Hitwise AudienceView

This summer will bring numerous pictures employing the limited release strategy, including Safety Not Guaranteed (Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza), Lola Versus (Greta Gerwig), Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love and French indie hit The Intouchables. If the volume of searches which occurred during the Italian release of Allen’s latest offering are any indication, To Rome with Love is likely to garner strong US interest, despite mixed reviews abroad.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Of course, Spiderman and Batman are perennial favorites both online and offline. In the digital space, searches for variations of “Batman” drove about 40% more search clicks in the week ending June 2^nd than searches for variations of “Spiderman”. But there is still time for Spidey to surpass Batman, with searches for variations of “Spiderman” growing 47% since the last week in March and searches for variations of “Batman” remaining relatively steady.

Though The Caped Crusader edges out Peter Parker across top markets, some areas have greater affinities for Spiderman than others. Angelenos and New Yorkers are most likely to search for the superheroes. With Gotham City and New York being the hometowns of Wayne and Parker, it’s no surprise that the NYC audience seems split between Spidey (42%) and Batman (58%). Chicagoans have the closest split, with variations of “Batman” winning 55% of their hero searches and variations of “Spiderman” capturing 45%.

Source: Experian Hitwise AudienceView

With just under a month until the release of The Amazing Spiderman and about two months until The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters, the road to top summer movie has only just begun – the question is whether any picture will be able to pip The Avengers to the post.

For more information about Experian Hitwise, click here.

In fact, “The Colbert Show” has impacted the lexicon web-users use to search for information about political action committees; people have shifted from searching for “PAC” to searching for “Super PAC” during the course of Colbert’s campaign. Moreover, people are increasingly seeking additional information about these organizations, as demonstrated in terms such as “what is a super PAC?” and “are {sic} super PAC dangerous?”

It remains to be seen whether these searches demonstrate a direct interest in political action committees or merely a desire to be “in on the joke.” Yet as people turn to sites like Wikipedia for PAC information, digital data indicates that The Colbert Report’s efforts to shine a light on the political process have been successful.

Of course, the genius of this piece in Colbert’s repertoire is that it doesn’t merely incite public curiosity in the US political system – it also drives interest in “The Colbert Report.” Traffic from searches for variations of “Colbert” has risen along with the major moments of his political shenanigans this year.

Though Colbert’s political follies have caused an uptick in search clicks, year-over-year it’s the terms “Stephen Colbert” and “Colbert Report” which have achieved the greatest growth.

Mr. Colbert’s dreams of becoming “The President of the United States of South Carolina” may have been dashed, but this election season promises to be a digital boon for the one-time presidential hopeful.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst with the Strategic Services group for today’s analysis.

Though this particular story pushed up sales of the work and caused the artist’s site to crash due to heavy traffic, it’s not a new phenomenon for Mr. McNaughton. Depending on writers’ political leanings, McNaughton is cast as the fine artist of Tea Party or a purveyor of the Tea Party agitprop. Regardless of political persuasions, it’s clear that people have very strong views about Mr. McNaughton’s work and the impact of this can be seen online.

In fact, the peak the artist’s piece “One Nation under God” (week of 11/14/09) provoked a market share of visit 5X larger than the share the current controversy (week of 2/4/12) has created. “The Forgotten Man” was originally released in 2010 and created a stir at that time.

As interest in McNaughton’s work has escalated again in recent weeks, the source of the site’s traffic has evolved. Initially, much of the site’s traffic came from YouTube, where a video of the artist discussing his work has garnered more than 3.5 million views. The site is now receiving more of its traffic from Facebook, Google and a variety of news sources.

As the 2012 election season progresses, we can expect more “hot button” stories to emerge and capture the public’s attention. These moments in news stories starkly illustrate that sharing opinions with our social networks creates a ripple effect, regardless of which way we’re facing.

Please visit our Political Data center for more stats.

Daily search data for February 5th shows that four of the five top searches around the term “Jason Wu” also included mentions of “Target”. An analysis of the individual keywords used in searches for “Jason Wu” on the day of the product launch indicates that “cat”, “poplin” “scarf” and “dress” were the top items that consumers were looking for related to the product line.

Total visits to Target.com were up 8% on February 5th when compared with the previous day, but down 77% when compared with Thanksgiving, which was the most highly trafficked date for Target in the past 6 months. However, total visits to Target were up 22% on the day the Jason Wu product launched when compared with September 13, 2011 – the date the Missoni line launched and the site had trouble keeping up with online consumer demand. However, average visit time to the site was slightly higher on the date of the Missoni launch when compared with the date of the Jason Wu launch (7:51 minutes versus 6:31 minutes).

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Strategic Services team for today’s analysis who wishes she lived closer to a Target.

1. Facebook.com captures one in every eleven Internet visits in the US.
2. 1 in every 5 page views occurs on Facebook.com.
3. The average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes.
4. Facebook.com’s audience skews slightly more female than the online population as a whole.
5. The ages of Facebook.com visitors are indicative of the website’s strength in the marketplace, with relative parity in distribution of its visit share by age vs. the online population.
6. Facebook.com under-indexes in visit share from the most affluent income group. With that said, Facebook’s size more than makes up the difference; the site wins 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group versus YouTube’s 223,732,591 visits and Twitter’s 15,166,795 visits.
7. Facebook.com became the #1 ranked website in the US on March 9, 2010.
8. “Facebook” is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks.
   
9. Facebook.com users are highly loyal to the website; 96% of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012.
10.  Internationally, Facebook.com ranks in the top two websites in every market except China, where Sina Weibo, Baidu Zhidao and Renren are the dominant social networks.Facebook.com’s largest footprint is in Canada, capturing almost 12% of all visits in that market. It also recently surpassed Orkut, placing it behind only Google Brazil in market share.

Facebook.com is the largest website in the US and a top performer in numerous international markets. The fan base of the site is loyal and spends a significant portion of their time online on the social network. Facebook’s influence is seen in the presidential elections, digital shopping habits and beyond.

Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst on the Strategic Services team for today’s analysis.

The visitors to the Facebook page for Mitt Romney during the last 4 weeks tend to be over 35 years old and somewhat less affluent with an annual household income under $100,000.

The top 4 states ranked by share of visits accounted for 35% of all visits over the last 4 weeks. Ohio and Utah were the states with the highest share of visits and aligns with the top DMAs for the Romney Facebook page – Cleveland, Ohio and Salt Lake City, Utah. Florida, an important state with an upcoming primary, ranked fourth with just over 5% of all.

While these measures alone are not enough to secure the nomination, this is a positive sign for the Romney campaign that social efforts are gaining attention and building an audience on Facebook.

For the latest data on the 2012 Elections, please visit our Politics Data Center.