Hitwise is a competitive intelligence service that gives you insight into where your competitors get their traffic from and which keywords drive the bulk of their traffic from search engines, among other things. It comes at a price of course -- to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

I noticed that in a post today Matt Cutts, Google engineer extraordinaire, made a small swipe at Hitwise in his review of the Compete search engine:

ISP relationships [buying user data from ISPs] can be a huge source of metrics bias. For example, some ISPs partner with Yahoo, and users on those ISPs are probably more likely to visit Yahoo. Other ISPs partner with Google. And savvy users that use smaller providers such as Covad or Speakeasy are likely not counted at all.

Because you don't know which ISPs are selling user data to companies such as Compete or Hitwise, you don't know what biases are baked into those companies' metrics--and the metrics companies won't tell you.

Touché, Inigo! (Matt Cutts' regular blog readers will get that)

So my question to Hitwise is... If you won't tell us who your ISP relationships are, will you at least reveal some of your biases? Like which search engine your biggest ISPs are partnered with?

Got some nice holiday paid search optimization tips in an email campaign from LookSmart. They started out stating the obvious, that the holidays are a crucial time. But here's a good stat to drive the point home: according to a WebTrends study, one out of five retailers surveyed by WebTrends said that the holiday season (October 1-December 31) accounts for 50% or more of their annual revenue.

Here are the tips they sent:

Add holiday keywords: Mix seasonal messaging with your brand to capitalize on how people search (e.g. holiday lawn decorations and Christmas sweaters).

Update copy: Make your regular copy compelling to holiday shoppers. According to Shopzilla's 2004 Online Holiday Scoop Study, half of online shoppers reported that "free shipping" was extremely or very important in selecting an online retailer when making a gift purchase. Once Christmas has come and gone, your work isn't through. Reach out to sale-shoppers to take advantage the post-holiday spike, see Hitwise data below.

Adjust keyword bids: Competitors bid aggressively during the holidays. Make sure you're getting the placement you want, but don't let the cost-per-click increase affect your ability to get real return on your ad spend. We suggest you track results down to a keyword-level.

Control spend: Use campaign tools to help predict and control spend.

Chart of weekly all sites market share in 'All Categories', based on visits.
Generated on 9/24/05. Copyright 2005 (c) 'Hitwise Pty Ltd.'

"In 2004, the trend in visits to the top 10 apparel sites increased substantially leading up to Christmas, experiencing a pre-holiday peak during the the week ending December 11. Additionally, there was a post-holiday peak during the week after Christmas, as shoppers went online to redeem holiday gift cards, spend gift money or take advantage of post-holiday sales. This shows that the holiday season online ends not the week before Christmas, as would be expected, but the first week in January."
--LeeAnn Prescott, Senior Research Analyst, Hitwise