About the author and Hitwise

Here is Bill Tancer's bio on www.hitwise.com:

http://www.hitwise.com/who-we-are/bill-tancer.php

Here is the hitwise blog, which I thought was interesting reading:

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/index.html

Hitwise is owned by Experian, one of the credit rating companies. THAT is interesting.
http://www.hitwise.com/who-we-are/company-history.php

Looks like their "search" methodology is going to be trade secret, so we'll never know...