View the segment below to learn more about the importance of multi-channel marketing, and how we’re helping marketers connect with their customers in this dynamic and complex multi-channel environment.

Bill also shares details and data on the most visited retail Websites, as well as the most popular products this holiday season in comparison to years past.

View additional broadcast segments and videos featuring our thought leaders and subject matter experts.

Experian Marketing Services

Among the top 10 terms, the top two terms stayed the same with facebook the top search term and “youtube” ranked at number two. The search term “craigslist” moved up from the fourth spot in 2011 to the third spot in 2012. “Facebook login” was the fourth most-searched term in 2012, followed by “facebook.com” and “yahoo.” The search term “amazon” moved into the top 10 terms for the first time. Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking–related terms dominated the results, accounting for 6.03 percent of the top 50 searches. This is an increase of 44 percent compared with 2011.

When combined, common search terms for Facebook — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — accounted for 5.84 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a 27 percent increase compared with 2011. YouTube terms accounted for 1.67 percent, representing a 23 percent increase compared with 2011. Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.91 percent — an increase of 20 percent compared with 2011. Yahoo terms accounted for 0.79 percent — an increase of 34 percent compared with 2011.

“Navigational searches continue to dominate the top search results as users continue to visit their favorite sites via search engines instead of directly entering a web address into their browsers URL bar,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services. “Single-word searches grew 16 percent in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results. Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.”

Other highlights include:

• The top 50 search terms accounted for more than 12 percent of all Internet searches in 2012 – representing a 30 increase compared to 2011.
• New terms that entered the top 50 search terms for 2012 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof – an acronym for Plenty of Fish, the top visited dating site in the US.
• The search terms yahoo and ebay have appeared among the top 10 since this ranking was started in 2006.

Top-visited websites in 2012

Facebook was the top-visited Website for the third year and accounted for 79.1 billion total US visits between in 2012. Google.com ranked second, with 78.5 billion total US visits — followed by YouTube (25.9 billion), Yahoo! Mail (22.2 billion) and Yahoo! (20.8 billion). eBay ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 2009.

The combination of Google properties accounted for 109.3 billion total. Facebook properties accounted for 79.1 billion total US visits, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 76.5 billion total visits. The top 10 Websites accounted for 276.3 billion total US visits or 32 percent of all U.S. Internet visits in 2012, which was slightly up compared with 2011.

Top public figure searches – Whitney Houston was the 196th most popular overall search term in the United States in 2012:

1. Whitney Houston (196)
2. Justin Beiber (242)
3. Kim Kardashian (291)
4. Nicki Minaj (371)
5. Bobbi Kristina (397)
6. Miley Cyrus (432)

Movies Titles – the top five searches from within the Movies category:

1. Breaking Dawn – Part 2
2. Magic Mike
3. The Dark Knight Rises
4. Prometheus
5. Dark Shadows

Music – the top five searched for artists/bands:

1. One Direction
2. Taylor Swift
3. Justin Beiber
4. Beyonce
5. Zac Brown Band

Branded Destinations – the top five search terms:

1. Disney World
2. Great Wolf Lodge
3. Disneyland
4. Hershey Park
5. Universal Studios Orlando

Top TV show searches – the top five primetime show searches from the Television category:

1. American Idol
2. Dancing with the Stars
3. The Voice
4. The Bachelor
5. South Park

Sports – The top searched-for athletes were Tiger Woods, Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning. The top searched for sports team was the Dallas Cowboys.

News and Media – The top non-celebrity search topics among News and Media sites in 2012 were hurricane sandy, iPhone5, election results and George Zimmerman.

If you are interested in more top 2012 data visits and fastest-moving searches, visit: the online trends page

Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Cyber Monday while Walmart received the second most visits. BestBuy was the 3rd most visited site with Target and JC Penney rounding out the top five. Among the top 5 sites, Amazon saw the biggest year-over-year growth at 36%.

Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Black Friday while Walmart was the second most visited retail site. BestBuy moved up to the 3rd most visited site while Target was the 4th most visited site. JC Penney moved up from being the 8th most visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day to the 5th most visited on Black Friday. Among the top 5 sites, JC Penney saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 26%. Looking at the top 20 retail sites on Black Friday, the Apple Store site saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 99%.

Check back for CyberMonday insight and a weekly recap of this week.

The top five visited retail sites all saw growth on Thanksgiving Day 2012 versus the previous day. Amazon.com was the top visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day followed by Walmart, Target and Best Buy. Sears jumped up to the top 5 after ranking 6th the day before. Among the top 5 sites, BestBuy saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 104%.

Thanksgiving Day ranked as 3rd highest transaction day in 2011 and perhaps there was an increase in email volume in 2012 as retailers got the word even more. In 2011, Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Thanksgiving were the top 3 Email Transaction days during the holiday season.

Keep checking back for more holiday updates as we share the latest insights.

This week the study finds:

• Led by a strong performance by multi-channel retailers, transaction rates, revenue per email and average order values are all higher this season than they were in 2011.
• Continuing last week’s trend, the overall email volume for the holiday season is almost identical to that seen in 2011.
• Halloween mailings are popular this week, but Christmas, Black Friday and Thanksgiving all received mentions in subject lines.
• A trend of a 17% increase in $-off campaigns compared to 2011.
• Offers to watch: So far this season, there are more Buy One Get One (BOGO) offers than seen in 2011.
• Searches for Black Friday have doubled since last week.

This week’s report also takes a look back at last year’s trends to give marketers better insight into how to reach their customers effectively in the 2012 holiday season.

Best days and times to email

The Top 10 transaction days provided 22% of overall transactions and had 14% of the overall volume in the 2011 Holiday season.

Transactions on Cyber Monday were double those on Black Friday, which was the second highest transaction day. Thanksgiving transactions ranked third. The Saturday and Sunday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday present another great opportunity to email, as they ranked 6th and 8th in transactions, but only 68th and 72nd in volume.

Peak days for key marketing channels sending traffic to the Retail 500 sites

Looking at key marketing channels sending traffic to the Retail 500 sites last holiday season, there were some varying trends that emerged within the different channels.

Search was sending the most traffic to the Retail 500 on Black Friday, while there was increased traffic to the retail sites on Cyber Monday from email and social.

Traffic to Retail 500 by channel and day

Potential voters are highly engaged online during this election.  Statistics show that an ever-increasing amount of campaign spending is going towards online advertising and social media – where campaigns are targeting specific audiences for their messages.   Political advertisers are realizing what other marketers have already embraced, that it is critical to target advertising messages and dollars online to reach the high value consumers that you want to reach.

Experian Hitwise took a look at where to reach party loyals as well as key swing voters online. The segments highlighted in this post include the Super Democrats and Ultra Conservatives segments, which represent the most party loyal voters for Democrats and Republicans, respectively. And one of the important swing voter segments during this election cycle, Green Traditionalists.

The segments come from the Experian Simmons PoliticalPersonas consumer segmentation system, which classifies U.S. adults into one of 10 unique segments based on the individual’s political outlook and party ID as well as their attitudes and opinions towards key topics.

Source: Experian Simmons
We looked at each of the segments and their share of visits to various print, broadcast news media and political websites to see how they differ. The rankings below are based on share of visits for each segment and compared to the online population.

For the Super Democrats group USA Today captured the largest share of visits in the print news and media category, followed by The New York Times. When comparing this segment’s news consumption to the online population they have a stronger propensity to visit local news sites in Northern California, Seattle and New York centric publications.

In the broadcast news & media category, CNN.com received the largest share of visits from the Super Democrats segment but interestingly for a more liberal group, Fox News is second along with other various Fox News sites which may reflect that they are going across various properties to gather different perspectives on the news.

Source: Hitwise AudienceView

Within the print news and media category, Ultra Conservatives had some similarities to Super Democrats in terms of sites that captured the largest shares like USA Today and The New York Times.  When comparing to the online population, Ultra Conservatives are less likely to be reading The New York Times and more likely to read The Wall Street Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Other sites like Taste of Home, Reader’s Digest and Galveston County Daily News may be smaller sites but are effectively capturing a high share of visits from this group.

Source: Hitwise AudienceView

In the broadcast news & media category, not surprisingly Fox News captured the largest share of visits from this segment and CNN.com as the number two site. Ultra Conservatives are far more likely to visit sites across the Fox News properties when compared to the online population.

Source: Hitwise AudienceView

For the key independent voter segment Green Traditionalists, the political websites they are more likely to visit is interesting to see where they are getting news about the candidates and issues. The highest share of visits is to the NBC election news site and they are far more likely to monitor election coverage here than the online population. Environment issues are a driving force for this group and that is reflected in the appearance of Governor Cuomo’s site as one that they are more likely to visit during the four weeks ending August 11. Cumo has been in the news recently related to the passing an anti-fracking bill and this group seems to have particular interest in the health and environmental impacts of processes like this. Green Traditionalists are clearly independent as they do visit websites on both sides of the spectrum with right leaning sites as well as some of the more liberal sites with environmental focus such as Care2Petition.

Source: Hitwise AudienceView

Publishers and campaign advertisers can drive strategic planning and highly targeted ad spend based on these insights.

View our webcast for more on insights on the PoliticalPersonas. For more political trends updated weekly – check out our Trend Center .

The growth of e-commerce over the past several years has included the emergence of Black Friday as one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Experian Hitwise has tracked site visits over the last eight years. Each year, two days have consistently captured the title of busiest shopping days of the year: Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday). Last year this all changed and Cyber Monday claimed the prize as the busiest shopping day of the year, growing from 138 million visits to 177 million visits to the Retail 500 index of sites, a 29% growth comparing 2010 to 2011.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Within the key retail categories for these holiday shopping milestones, sites within the Apparel & Accessories, House & Garden and Toys & Hobbies saw the most growth on Cyber Monday year over year. These key categories all saw growth on Thanksgiving & Black Friday as well except for Toys & Hobbies which has a slight decrease year over year.

Source: Experian Hitwise

What do these and other trends mean for your holiday season? Join our webinar on September 26^th, as our experts share more on traffic drivers, search trends and critical insights that will improve your ability to target and engage high value consumer segments. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about what, how and when consumers search and buy online during the holiday season.

And now, the rumors are once again driving search activity. A year-over-year trend shows that “iPhone 5” searches were more popular than searches on “iPhone 4” between August and early October 2011, up until the iPhone 4s announcement when the latter term became more widely searched. Search variations around “iPhone 5” have been steadily increasing since the beginning of 2012 and peaked the week of August 18 when searches grew 128% from the previous week as speculation around the next generation iPhone reached a fever pitch.

Source: Experian Hitwise

In the week leading up to the most recent “iPhone 5” search peak, some new search terms emerged including “leaked iPhone 5” which primarily sent traffic to the MSNBC Technology Blog as a result of the site posting photos of the alleged new device. Other popular search term variations were around the release date, including searches on when wireless carrier Sprint will sell the next generation iPhone, along with queries around features and specs, rumors and price.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Among the top websites receiving traffic from “iPhone 5” searches the week ending August 18 were Yahoo! News and Yahoo!, both of which experienced significant increases in search clicks from these terms week over week (+162% and 772%, respectively). iPhone5Release.org, a site devoted exclusively to news on the next generation device, was among the top five sites receiving traffic from “iPhone 5” terms and also experienced a large increase in search clicks over the past week (+402%). The top iPhone-related term sending traffic to the site last week was “iPhone 5” while “leaked iPhone 5” and “iPhone 5 in production” emerged as new terms sending traffic to the site. Only one retailer, Walmart.com, was among the top ten sites receiving traffic from “iPhone 5” terms last week; the site experienced a 222% increase in search clicks versus the previous week and 88% of the clicks to the site were from paid search.

Source: Experian Hitwise

It’s rumored that Apple will announce the new iPhone on September 12, when a smaller version of the iPad may also be revealed. Searches on the “iPad mini” increased dramatically the week of April 21, 2012 when a Chinese website reported on an expected third quarter release of the mini Apple tablet. Searches for “iPad mini” were on the rise again in early July as numerous websites reported information on Apple’s strategy around the device. Walmart was the top recipient of traffic from “iPad mini” searches in the 12 weeks ending August 18th, receiving nearly 10% of downstream search clicks. Walmart’s relatively high share of paid traffic (79%) from iPad mini terms further indicates the retailer is looking to capitalize on the upcoming Apple product launches.

Source: Experian Hitwise

New rumors are popping up daily, and seem to be fueling the growth of Apple’s stock price, as pent up consumer demand is expected to drive significant sales volume if and when the new iPhone and iPad are released. Stay tuned for updates on how consumers react to the Apple announcements on September 12^th to see how they drive online consumer behavior.

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.