Seat Pagine Gialle presents the Web Monitor that tracks Paginegialle.it searches with a view to the Christmas festivities

• There have been 30 million searches and 11 million hits on Paginegialle.it in the last month
• Shopping: searches for hi-tech products have increased (+17%) to the detriment of jewellery, watches and more traditional items (-18%), with the exception of books (more than +30%)
• The food sector is on the rise (+11%), whilst tourism-related searches are down (-11%)

Turin, 11 December  2008 – SEAT Pagine Gialle, one of the world’s main players in the field of multimedia telephone directories and hi-tech Internet services, publishes the Web Monitor results as Christmas approaches. These results have been obtained by comparing searches on the PagineGialle.it portal carried out in November 2008 with those for the same period in 2007.

The figures show, first of all, a 35% increase in traffic on PagineGialle.it over last year, with a total of almost 4 million unique users, 30 million searches and 11 million hits in November 2008. “In view of the Christmas shopping, the Italians increasingly rely on the tools made available by Seat, particularly the PagineGialle.it online offering to search for information and products,” commented Paolo Gonano, Marketing Director for SEAT Pagine Gialle. “The current economic climate makes consumers more selective in what they buy and so they use our directories, both online and on other platforms, as a valuable aid for an initial ‘exploration’ of products and services in which they are interested”.

Analysing the Web Monitor results in detail, on the gift front users seem to be opting mainly for hi-tech products, a sector that records overall a 17% increase over 2007; mobile phones, video games and plasma screen televisions stand out in particular as the products most sought after by Italians.

The more classic gifts, on the other hand, are proving to be less attractive, as shown by the minus sign recorded by searches involving watches, jewellery and traditional gift items (-18%) and clothing (-13%); books, by contrast, are holding firm. These are “evergreen” items that many Italians will find under the tree as shown by the sharp rise in bookshop-related searches (up more than 30%).

The food sector records a positive performance, with an overall growth in the region of 11%. Therefore, 2008 will again see quality wine and gastronomic products play a starring role on Italian dining tables, as well as being one of the most favourite gift ideas, as food-related searches illustrate (+20%). In addition, the increase recorded for restaurant searches (+5%) suggests that not all families will celebrate Christmas at home and that some are planning to eat out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

As regards leisure time during the Christmas break, tourism is expected to play a less significant role than in 2007, as shown by the slowdown experienced by the searches in the entire sector
(-11%), which does, however, continue to record the most searches. An increase was nonetheless recorded in searches involving holidays offering a high price/quality ratio, such as for example stays in farmhouse accommodation (+5%) or family-run establishments (+7%), and there has been a significant rise in requests for information relating to local tourism boards (up more than 40%).




SEAT PAGINE GIALLE GROUP
The SEAT Pagine Gialle Group is one of the main operators at world level in the sector of multimedia profiled advertising, offering “print-voice-online” directories, hi-tech products for the Internet and for satellite and ortophotometric navigation, as well as complementary communication services such as one-to-one marketing.
SEAT Pagine Gialle has been engaged in information services, and search and communications tools for over 80 years. It is a success story based on a brand that is familiar to everyone, a sales network employing over 2,000 persons, a technology that is constantly evolving and a database that includes 15 million households and 3.8 million businesses (2007 data), and a wide range of products guaranteeing a real integrated system of communications to about 600,000 Italian customers. A total of 65 million volumes distributed to the homes and offices of Italian subscribers (2007 data), 35 million enquiries through the directory assistance service (2007 data), and over 340 million hits on online directories (2007 data) connect people and businesses, bringing together needs and solutions and promoting economic exchanges.

Press contacts

Seat Pagine Gialle

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Tel. +39 011.435.3030
Fax +39 011.435.3040

Burson-Marsteller

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Tel. +39 02.721431