iPhone searches skyrocket

Pointing to widespread awareness, web searches for the term "iphone" have increased dramatically in the past month. The research firm Hitwise claims that between the weeks ending May 26th and June 23rd, the volume of US searches rose 583 percent. Crucially for Apple, the company was the primary recipient of redirected traffic, accumulating 54.4 percent of hits. iPhone carrier AT&T came a distant second at 6.5 percent, while Wikipedia, Engadget and MySpace rounded out the top five. Searches broke into several categories: while the majority were variations on the basic product, price was the next biggest concern, followed by trailing interest in news and the release date.

Hitwise also notes that the Apple iPhone page saw a 185 percent increase in US visits, but that despite these figures, "iphone" was only the 131st most searched term linking to American websites. Similarly, the term was only the fifth on the list sending people to AT&T.

Breaking the statistics into demographics, Hitwise observes that the greatest number of searchers (32.2 percent) were aged 18 to 24, and that the largest income bracket (27.5 percent) was $30,000 to $60,000. The gender divide was nearly even, with males having a slight lead at 51.2 percent.

by MacNN Staff