Brits turn to search for US election info
Wednesday, 05, Nov 2008 10:46
New data from Hitwise has highlighted the popularity of online search among Britons seeking more information on the recently concluded US presidential elections.
Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin collected the highest number of online searches out of all of the hopefuls among Britons in the last two months, while Democrat Barack Obama received a higher number of queries than rival John McCain.
Wikipedia accounted for the highest level of web traffic from UK searches for all four candidates in the last four weeks, followed by the official Barack Obama website and Google News, Hitwise UK research director Robin Goad noted.
In terms of click-throughs to newspaper websites from paid search ads, the Times and the Guardian saw higher rates than other publications.
"The Times has been the most successful newspaper site and its search marketing campaign has obviously paid off," Mr Goad said.
News and media sites are growing in popularity in the UK, with recent Hitwise figures suggesting that British traffic to news aggregator websites has more than doubled in the last two years.