Olympics, Conventions Boost August Traffic To News Sites
MSNBC Digital Network
(MSNBC) was the top U.S.-based news and current events website in August, according to Nielsen Online.
Surging interest in the Beijing Olympics and the U.S. political conventions, which occupied back-to-back weeks in August, may have played a part in boosting MSNBC past its close competitor, Yahoo! News, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.
In August, MSNBC drew 52.2 million unique visitors — 12 million more than Yahoo!’s news portal, according to Nielsen. During the prior August, both Yahoo! News and CNN Digital Network edged past MSNBC.com, with 34.3 million and 31.7 million unique visitors, respectively, to MSNBC’s 29.6 million visitors.
| Aug. 2008 Rank |
Top 10 Online News Sites (ranked by unique users) |
August 2008 Unique Traffic (in 000’s) |
August 2007 Unique Traffic (in 000’s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSNBC Digital Network | 52,212 | 29,564 |
| 2 | Yahoo! News | 40,787 | 34,277 |
| 3 | CNN Digital Network | 38,821 | 31,733 |
| 4 | AOL News | 23,114 | 21,209 |
| 5 | NYTimes.com | 19,862 | 13,078 |
| 6 | Tribune Newspapers | 17,652 | 12,550 |
| 7 | Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division | 14,454 | 13,720 |
| 8 | Fox News Digital Network | 13,902 | 8,465 |
| 9 | ABCNEWS Digital Network | 13,377 | 10,706 |
| 10 | Google News | 12,137 | 10,235 |
| Source: The Nielsen Company (August 1 – 31, 2007 and August 1 – 31, 2008) |
Most of the news websites in Nielsen’s top 30 ranking attracted larger online audiences in August 2008 than they had the prior August, and all but two of the top 10 sites showed double-digit percentages of growth.
Beyond the top 10, TheHuffingtonPost.com, ranked #23 by Nielsen, and the Daily News Online Edition (#30) showed especially large year-over-year audience growth.
TheHuffingtonPost.com saw its unique audience jump by 291% — from 1.3 million in August 2007 to 5.1 million last month. Meanwhile, the Daily News Online Edition grew by 103% — from 2.2 million unique visitors in August 2007 to 4.5 million in August 2008.
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2008/olympics-conventions-boost-august-traffic-to-us-news-sites/
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