Guitar Hero 3 launched 28th October and has since garnered $115 million for Activision whose chairman today revealed that Activision has shipped more of the Guitar Hero 3 game than any other in its history. In short order Guitar Hero 3 became the most searched for video game based on share of US Internet searches.

The search term "guitar hero 3" ranked #208 among search terms sending visits to All Categories of websites last week and "guitar hero 3 cheats" ranked #229. There were no other video games among the top 500 search terms last week (though "xbox 360" ranked #397 and "wii" ranked #400). The following chart illustrates the increase in Internet searches for the game last week.

However, Hitwise data reveals that retailers may be missing out. The top websites receiving traffic from searches for "guitar hero 3" in the four weeks to November 3rd were Wikipedia (receiving 24% of visits from searches for the game) and Guitar Hero.com (with 10% of visits).

To measure the interest in purchasing the game, I looked at Hitwise clickstream data. The Guitar Hero website includes a link to "buy the game" and last week 38% US visitors to the Guitar Hero website continued to the Guitar Hero Game website -- to which the "buy the game" link leads. Several retailers are listed on that website and 20% of visits from Guitar Hero Game went to a retail website. The top retailers visited were Best Buy, Red Octane, Walmart and Game Stop. Interest seems high in purchasing the game, indicating that retailers could benefit from taking out paid search listings.

I also noticed in looking at the clickstream data that the PlayStation website was the #3 downstream website from Guitar Hero Game. I found it curious -- and interesting -- that Playstation ranked #3, Nintendo Wii #10 and Microsoft Xbox #43. The console wars continue...

Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins is VP of Research for Hitwise UK. This piece was first posted on Hitwise Analyst blog here.