HITWISE ELECTION UPDATE

Labour and Conservatives neck-and-neck online with just two weeks until the Election

London, 21^st April 2005

With the General Election just two weeks away, Labour and the Conservatives are currently neck-and-neck in the race for online popularity, with the Liberal Democrats hot on their heels.

Hitwise daily data for Tuesday April 20^th reveals that mid-way through the parties’ campaigns, the websites of both the Labour Party and the Conservatives are closer than they have been since the election was called on April 5th, with the Conservatives claiming 31.7% market share of a custom category of the major parties’ websites and Labour holding 29.5%. The parties’ sites rank at #3 and #4 respectively in the Hitwise  Politics category.

The closing gap between the two major parties represents a loss of 8% market share by the Conservatives since the election was announced, combined with a 4% gain by Labour. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have also made headway since the start of their campaigns.

An analysis of the daily performance of the five biggest parties in the upcoming election reveals that each saw a significant spike following the release of their party manifesto. Labour overtook the Conservatives for the first and only time in the course of the campaign on April 13^th, the same day their ‘Britain Forward Not Back’ manifesto was launched. The following day, the Liberal Democrats managed to inch their way past Labour and move into second place following their manifesto’s release.

Despite the popularity of parties’ manifestos, UK Internet users found a simpler political comparison tool useful this week. Instead of wading through pages of political rhetoric, voters turned to www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com to get voting recommendations by filling out a short questionnaire on key political issues. The site’s viral popularity saw it become the top Politics site on Friday April 15^th with almost 10% market share.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.co.uk

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

Tel: 020 7378 3619