Election Gives Online News Sites Major Traffic Boost
News sites like MSNBC, the Huffington Post, Fox News, ABC, and the Washington Post, all saw significant gains in traffic with pre-election coverage according to Nielsen Online, which compared October 2008 visits with stats from October 2007.
MSNBC Digital Network topped the list of news sites with nearly 41M unique visitors, a 37% jump from the prior year.
The news/opinion site the Huffington Post placed 18th on the list, but showed the greatest traffic gain. It’s 8.1M unique readers for October 2008 was a 448% improvement over the prior year.
CNN, Yahoo!, AOL, and the New York Times rounded out the top five in overall traffic.
More at Editor & Publisher.
Top 30 News Sites For October 2008
| RANK | SITE | UNIQUES | % GAIN FROM OCT 07 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSNBC Digital Network | 40,946,000 | 37% |
| 2 | CNN Digital Network | 38,489,000 | 27% |
| 3 | Yahoo! News | 37,340,000 | 13% |
| 4 | AOL News | 20,827,000 | 1% |
| 5 | NYTimes.com | 20,348,000 | 16% |
| 6 | Tribune Newspapers | 17,714,000 | 36% |
| 7 | ABCNEWS Digital Network | 15,479,000 | 43% |
| 8 | Fox News Digital Network | 14,269,000 | 51% |
| 9 | Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division | 12,924,000 | -5% |
| 10 | Google News | 12,534,000 | 13% |
| 11 | washingtonpost.com | 12,375,000 | 43% |
| 12 | USATODAY.com | 11,381,000 | 20% |
| 13 | CBS News Digital Network | 11,004,000 | 17% |
| 14 | McClatchy Newspaper Network | 10,946,000 | 18% |
| 15 | BBC | 8,962,000 | 7% |
| 16 | Hearst Newspapers Digital | 8,864,000 | 19% |
| 17 | MediaNews Group Newspapers | 8,599,000 | 11% |
| 18 | The HuffingtonPost.com | 8,107,000 | 448% |
| 19 | Advance Internet | 8,012,000 | 19% |
| 20 | WorldNow | 7,547,000 | -36% |
| 21 | Topix | 6,815,000 | 6% |
| 22 | Slate | 6,548,000 | 35% |
| 23 | Boston.com | 6,133,000 | 11% |
| 24 | Cox Newspapers | 5,621,000 | 26% |
| 25 | Gannett Broadcasting | 5,323,000 | 16% |
| 26 | Fox Television Stations | 5,098,000 | 57% |
| 27 | NPR | 5,032,000 | 52% |
| 28 | New York Post Holdings | 5,000,000 | 32% |
| 29 | MailOnline | 4,795,000 | 17% |
| 30 | Daily News Online Edition | 4,671,000 | 33% |
https://www.qa.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2008/election-gives-online-news-sites-major-traffic-boost/