12/08/99
ireland.com breaks all traffic records

Yesterday’s online coverage of the last solar eclipse of the millennium on ireland.com and ireland.com - The Irish Times broke all previous traffic records for Ireland’s leading Web site. Approximately 415,000 page impressions were recorded over a single 24-hour period. This represents a jump of 21% on the last traffic record which took place in March 1999 during the run-up to both St. Patrick’s Day and the launch of ireland.com.

In partnership with Irish Ferries and the Internet Broadcast Company, ireland.com carried live transmission of the eclipse from the Normandy, the Irish Ferries ship positioned in the path of the total eclipse off the north-west coast of France. Links from such sites as CNN, Le Monde, Yahoo, Indigo and Ireland Online all generated additional traffic to ireland.com, dramatically increasing the number of new visitors to the site. ireland.com and ireland.com - The Irish Times was the only Irish Web site to feature a live video transmission of the solar eclipse.

For users who were unable to access the live coverage, archived footage of the eclipse is still available online at www.ireland.com/special/eclipse in addition to interviews with leading astronomy experts etc.

The audience levels of ireland.com have been steadily increasing since its launch in March and recently added services such as MyTV, a personalised TV listings service and World Football, an in-depth guide to soccer featuring the Premiership, League of Ireland as well as all the international championships, have successfully attracted a broad range of new users.

The site will also be the first to carry the complete first-round offers of third-level places from the Central Applications Office, (CAO) at 12.01 a.m. on Tuesday, August 24th next.

ireland.com is published by The Irish Times Electronic Publishing Division and is Ireland’s most popular Web site with over 7.2 million page impressions a month. With news and services ranging from breaking news to free email, the site aims to serve both the Irish internet user and users interested in Ireland in general.

Access to ireland.com requires no subscription or registration. The address is: www.ireland.com

Back to Press release index