Melbourne, September 16, 2005
The day after Mark Latham appeared on Andrew Denton's television show 'Enough Rope' in relation to the forthcoming publication 'The Latham Diaries', Hitwise, the leading online intelligence service, reports that Latham's popularity has skyrocketed online.  Australian online searches containing the term "latham" has increased by over 270% between the 14th September and 15th September 2006. 

A sample of search terms used by Australian Internet users to find out more about the former Labor leader saw some very interesting results.  Some of the most eye opening search terms used across all search engines yesterday included the following:

• mark latham diaries
• the latham diaries
• mark latham book review
• mark latham legal injunction
• mark latham interview cancelled
• mark latham home page
• legal action latham
• latham's bitter book
• latham sue beazley
• latham injunction
• is mark latham mentally ill
• "mark latham" comments

Andrew Denton's 'Enough Rope' website  www.abc.net.au/enoughrope increase in visits by over 500% overnight.  Hitwise expect that further online political insights relating to Mark Latham's revelations will unfold during the weekend as further Australian's research online.  

Please contact Hitwise for further information on website performances across the Politics category. 

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximise the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.au

For media enquiries, please contact:

James Borg

(03) 8530 2420 

james.borg@hitwise.com