The top searched political issues between both presidential candidates in Q2 2008 included Health care, Global warming, Education and Immigration according to Hitwise, the leader in online competitive intelligence. Other top issue searches included Abortion for Obama in Q2 2008 and Oil prices for McCain.

In Q1 2008, abortion and immigration were the two common search term issues for both candidates. Obama political issue searches focused on Gay marriage, Gun control, Education and Immigration. McCain political issue searches included Health care, Global warming and the Economy. Other popular searches that popped up for Obama included information on his family, merchandise and his speeches and quotes. For McCain, searches were for information on his speeches and quotes, his age and his jokes.

”Searches show that voters on both sides of the aisle have shared concerns around issues such as health care, global warming and immigration,â€� said Heather Dougherty, research director, Hitwise. ”This has implications for what content should be featured on the candidates' websites, and broadly across all communications with voters."

Hitwise analyzed the top 200 U.S. search terms that sent visits to the presidential candidates' websites for the first half of 2008, revealing the types of content that is being searched for the most among Internet users. The most common type of content that drive visitors to Barack Obama's website was for biographical information or basic facts about the presumptive Democrat nominee. For John McCain's website, almost one third are seeking information about the Republican candidate's views on major issues. Rumors and Religion were the other top content searches for Obama, while Campaign information, Biography and Family searches.

For more information on the audience breakdown of visitors to both candidate websites please view the following post on the Hitwise blog: http://tiny.cc/os6PE

Obama Receives 79% of Visits; New Visitors Dominate McCain's Traffic

Barackobama.com received 79.25 percent of U.S. online visits between a custom category of both presidential candidate websites. This represents a 7 percent decrease compared to May 2008 and a 5 percent decrease compared to June 2007. McCain's traffic increased 42 percent compared to May 2008 and 24 percent compared to June 2007. Among all U.S. websites, both candidates saw increases in visits as Obama's website increased 1,367 percent and McCain's website increased 2200 percent compared to June 2007.

New and Returning Visitors

In June 2008, Barack Obama's website received 55 percent of its visits from returning visitors and 45 percent from new visitors. McCain's website received 21 percent of its visits from returning visits and 79 percent from new visitors.

For more political coverage please visits the Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center located on the Hitwise website at: http://www.hitwise.com/political-data-center.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.