News and Media U.S. Visits Increased 23 Percent Last Week

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News and Media U.S. Visits Increased 23 Percent Last Week

Lunar eclipse, Lindsay Lohan and Jennifer Lopez drove searches

NEW YORK, NY – February 28, 2008 - The market share of U.S. visits to the News and Media category increased 22 percent for the week ending Feb. 23, 2008, compared to the same week in 2007, Hitwise reported today. Over the past two weeks, the News and Media category reached its highest peak in the last 36 month period.

The Print category, which is comprised of online magazines and newspaper websites, increased 23 percent for the week ending Feb. 23, 2008, compared to the same week during the previous year. The most visited website within the Print category last week was The New York Times (nytimes.com), which received five percent of the market share of visits.

Top 5 News & Media Print Websites ranked by Market Share of U.S. Visits for the week ending Feb. 23, 2008
Rank	Name	Domain	U.S. Visits w/e Feb. 23, 2008
1	New York Times	www.nytimes.com	5.06%
2	People Magazine	www.people.com	3.31%
3	The Washington Post	www.washingtonpost.com	2.19%
4	TV Guide.com	www.tvguide.com	1.97%
5	USA Today	www.usatoday.com	1.69%
Note - the Hitwise data featured is based on U.S. market share of visits, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites which are reported on separately.
Source: Hitwise

Other top Print websites for last week included People.com which received three percent of the U.S. visits followed by The Washington Post which received two percent of visits. New York Times posted the largest year-over-year traffic growth among the top five websites within the Print category with a 50 percent increase in U.S. visits. The website of New York magazine (www.newyorkmetro.com) experienced a 336 percent increase in market share of visits for the week ending Feb. 23, 2008 from the previous week after posting the online version of the “Lohan as Monroe” photo spread.

“The photos of Lindsay Lohan portraying Marilyn Monroe sparked considerable interest from online users last week,” said Heather Dougherty, Research Director, Hitwise. “Although the battle for the presidential nominations is certainly top of mind for many, celebrity news provides a refuge for less-heated debates.”

Top News and Media Content Searches

Lindsay Lohan was the second most searched for term among all News and Media websites and News and Media - Print websites for last week (see table below). The search term "lunar eclipse" was tops among all News and Media websites while "jennifer lopez" was the top search term among News and Media - Print websites. Barack Obama made up three of top 10 searches among both categories as did American Idol and Dancing with the Stars with two top 10 searches.

Top News and Media Content Search Terms
News & Media category, week ending 02/23/08	Print category, week ending 02/23/2008
lunar eclispe	jennifer lopez
lindsay lohan	lindsay lohan
jennifer lopez	lunar eclipse
obama	flat belly diet
barack obama	barack obama
dancing with the stars	obama
giant sea spiders	dancing with the stars
american idol	jody tagaris
kosovo	lindsay lohan marilyn monroe
nevada earthquake	american idol
Note - the search term data is based on the volume of all U.S. searches for one week resulting from the Hitwise sample of 10 million users. Generic search results were filtered out to create the top 10 Print topic lists.
Source: Hitwise

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.