The Nintendo Wii was the most searched for product by UK Internet shoppers during November. There were thirteen times as many UK Internet searches for ‘nintendo wii’ sending traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category as there were for ‘apple ipod’, and over twice as many searches for ‘wii’ as for both ‘ipod’ and ‘iphone’. Despite shortages of the popular console in the UK, the volume of searches for ‘nintendo wii’ has increased 158% since November 2006, while searches for ‘wii’ have increased by 278%.

Top 10 product searches sending traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classified category, two weeks ending 1st December 2007, based on UK Internet usage.

The Nintendo Wii currently accounts for six in every ten searches for a games console. The popularity of the Wii and the Nintendo DS mean that there were more searches for Nintendo products in November than Apple products. This is despite the significant increases in searches for both the iPod and the iPhone, which is currently the most searched for mobile phone in the UK.

Unfortunately for UK consumers, there is still a Wii shortage in the UK. As a result, a number of sites specifically dedicated to sourcing the console have already appeared and are proving popular. The most successful of these, Wii Consoles, was the 58th most visited Shopping and Classifieds website in the UK in November, having increased its market share by 265% during the month.

It’s interesting that wii-consoles.co.uk has managed to achieve this growth through effective SEO rather than aggressive paid search (which accounts for just 1% of its search traffic). The site is delivering traffic to a number of large retail sites, as the table below illustrates. These sites are also generally the ones receiving search traffic from Wii related terms. Variations on the term are the most popular non navigational search terms currently sending traffic to Argos, Play and Amazon UK; and the second or third most popular for HMV, John Lewis and GAME.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.

Flickr Image By Tom Lawrence

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