On July 22, 2013, the citizenry of planet Earth was introduced to one George Alexander Louis, AKA, the Prince of Cambridge. And boy, were we fired up for it.
The Hitwise chart below shows the top overall search terms (US-based only) the week His Royal Highness was born. “Royal baby” was the 17th most-searched term overall for the week. He edged out financial industry heavyweights Wells Fargo and Bank of America, but wasn’t quite as popular as Walmart.
Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise 2013
When the corporate-specific terms are filtered out (but permitting news stories) we see that “royal baby” is the clear winner; it was searched twice as often as the next closest term, “Rosalind Franklin,” the subject of a Google Doodle on July 25. Next in line was “weather” – the royal baby trounced the world’s go-to topic for breaking the ice.
Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise 2013
But what content provider was able to draw in the searching masses? The table below reveals that Yahoo! was the runaway winner in royal baby search traffic (probably to the delight of their advertisers) the week of the birth. An interesting tidbit about Yahoo! and its sister properties is that they appear to be the go-to for all things celebrity baby. Just over a month earlier, Yahoo! properties combined captured nearly one-third of all traffic related to that other celebrity baby.
Includes variations of kate middleton, princess kate, william and kate, with baby, pregnant, preganacy, and birth keywords, as well as variations of royal baby. Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise 2013
But this begs the question of who won the traffic for each type of content? During the week the birth occurred, searches on the baby’s “name” were 62% greater than searches on “pictures” and 10X greater than “news.”
Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise 2013
Again we see Yahoo! as the winner for both the name and photo seekers, with a particular advantage in photo content. Perhaps not surprisingly, broadcast news websites fared better among people who were just after the latest updates. So if your brand is popular among people who need to be the first to know…
Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Simmons 2013
…consider a campaign on CBSnews.com and ABCnews.com when we’re about to be graced with future celebrity bundles of joy.
Take advantage of further search and consumer insights when planning your next campaign