Online ‘foreclosure’ searches increase

Hitwise, a Web metrics company, reported in its corporate blog this week that online search-engine queries including the phrase ‘foreclosure’ have increased considerably in the past weeks. Searches including the term ‘foreclosure’ peaked during the week ending Feb. 2, 2008, and hit the second-highest and third-highest levels in the weeks ending Feb. 28 and March 7 of this year. Last year’s spike followed media coverage of U.S. cities with the highest rates of foreclosure, with many searches featuring the phrases ‘what is foreclosure’ and ‘highest foreclosure cities.’ For the four-week period ending March 7, 2009, searches for ‘free foreclosure listings’ and ‘foreclosure listings’ topped the list of search phrases containing ‘foreclosure,’ Hitwise reported.