I imagine that most of us, even if we don’t actually use it day-to-day as much as we should, are at least familiar with Hitwise and the services it provides for competitive websites.
Still, yesterday’s MAP gathering provided an ample refresher in the shape of Robin Goad, the Director Of Research for Hitwise UK who entertained us for an hour in the lecture theatre with a catch-up of all the stuff Hitwise has to offer.
We were reminded that Hitwise monitors the online habits of 25 million users and covers the comings to and goings from about a million sites in many categories using the unique “clickstream”. We were assured that using the daily Hitwise ranking list would ensure we give our sites the best competitive edge with the ability to customise our own “dashboards” to provide stats on the success or otherwise of keywords, seasonal campaigns and the demographic profile of readers. And we were left in no doubt that, quite frankly, only a fool wouldn’t use Hitwise if they had any intention at all of being successful online.
But, as I say, we all knew that. What we did discover, though, is that although Hitwise is a fabulous tool for us to use to our won ends for our own devices, Robin also runs a blog where, essentially, he picks out what seems to him (them?) to be some of the more impressive or remarkable trends occuring sometimes unnoticed by us under our very noses.
The blog is here at www.ilovedata.com and this very day it charts what may well be the beginning of the decline of the Facebook phenomenon.
Fascinating stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.