April 2001

ireland.com records 48% per cent 12-month growth in traffic

ireland.com recorded an increase of over 48% per cent in traffic in the 12 months from March 2000 to March 2001, according to ABC ELECTRONIC audit figures just released. According to ABC Electronic - the leading electronic media auditing bureau - the website recorded 24.6 million page impressions, or web page accesses, in March, a 48% per cent increase on the same period last year.

The number of individual users accessing ireland.com increased by 32% in the last year and now stands at 1.52 million.

ireland.com remains the busiest content-driven Irish website with its nearest media competitor, RTE Online, recording page impressions of 6.7 million, according to independent media tracking company, New Medialive.

There has been a 45 per cent increase in the page impressions originating in Ireland in the six months since October of last year. There were 5.98 million page impressions of Irish origin in October 2000. In March that had risen to 8.66 million page impressions. The same time period saw a 17 per cent increase in unique users accessing the site from Ireland. The figure rose from 346,942 unique users in October to 405,922 unique users in March 2001. Users accessing the site from Ireland now make up 35 per cent of the total traffic into the site.

Mr Nick Chapman, managing director of Irish Times Ltd, said: "It's an impressive rate of growth building on the investment we have been making in ireland.com. The Internet is essential to the future of The Irish Times. As we move forward we are focusing on revenue generation and moving towards profitability for ireland.com which is also an essential part of our strategy."

The editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady, commenting on the latest figures said: "These are excellent indicators for the future development of electronic publishing services at The Irish Times. We're showing steady growth in circulation in the print editions as well. The growth in print circulation, taken together with the ireland.com figures, shows that The Irish Times is now a multi-media publisher - and a very successful one."

The foot-and-mouth crisis resulted in a large increase in traffic generally, particularly in the Breaking News section of the site, which saw a 68 per cent increase in traffic from February. The number of page impressions recorded in the Breaking News section of the site in March stood at 3.4 million.

The enhanced jobs site launched in February has also fared well with an increase in traffic of over 160 per cent to one million page impressions from January.

Mr Seamus Conaty, managing director of the Irish Times New Media Division welcomed the new figures describing them as "another outstanding result" adding that he was "particularly pleased with the growth in our Irish users."