HITWISE UK COMMUNITY UPDATE

G8 Summit drives traffic to Make Poverty History

London, 31^st May 2005

Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports that traffic to the Make Poverty History website is fast gaining momentum ahead of the upcoming G8 Summit in July.

With Tony Blair making public promises to help end poverty in Africa, the Make Poverty History alliance has capitalized on the widespread media attention the summit has received by organizing a highly publicized protest to coincide with the gathering of G8 countries – and has successfully aligned its brand with the summit, reflected in its online activity.

Hitwise data reveals that the charity’s official website (www.makepovertyhistory.org) has enjoyed a steady increase in traffic over the past few months and most recently, the site doubled its share of visits between May 7th and May 21st. Significant news coverage for Make Poverty History has increased awareness of the campaign, and resulted in an increase of searches (89%) for ‘make poverty history’. ‘g8 edinburgh’ is also one of the top 20 search terms driving traffic to the website and almost 60% of searches for ‘g8 edinburgh’ drove traffic to www.makepovertyhistory.org – indicating that the interest in the events planned by the charity to coincide with the summit have eclipsed interest in the event itself.

Live 8, a charity concert being organised by Bob Geldof in support of the Make Poverty History campaign, has also seen a massive increase in interest in recent weeks.  Live Aid II, expected to take place on July 2 with Geldof making an official announcement on it today, has seen searches for it increase by more than 1600% between May 7th and May 21st. Geldof believes Live 8 could pressurise the leaders of the world's richest nations into dropping Third World debt.

The G8 summit is the latest in a series of recent events that Make Poverty History has successfully leveraged for an increase in web traffic. Earlier this year, the craze for charity wristbands resulted in a boost in visitors to www.makepovertyhistory.org, while the debut of the ‘click’ ad campaign in April also saw a rise in market share for the site. This highlights Make Poverty History’s success in aligning its brand with different causes and important events in the charity sector – keeping its campaign relevant and ensuring it remains in the news.

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

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