Hitwise reports some interesting statistics in competitive intelligence for October 2009. First, if you’re in the automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, online video, social networking, or sports industries then your industry saw a double-digit increase in search engine traffic between October 2008 and October 2009. That’s pretty significant news and when you consider that health and medical saw a 5% decline, it’s even more significant.

The following industries experienced a double-digit increase in traffic from Google specifically:

• Automotive
• Business and Finance
• Entertainment
• News and Media
• Social Networking
• Sports

Another interesting tidbit from this report: Longer search queries are continuing to climb. Eight or more words increased by 4% from September 2009 to October 2009. Seven words increased by the same amount. It looks like longer is making a comeback. Still, single word search queries amount for 24.03% percent of all search queries.

Read the full report from Hitwise.