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and schoolwork
Traffic surges to education and pigskin sites
By Marty Beard
As summer begins to fade into fall, Americans are turning to two traditional autumn online pastimes: football and schoolwork. For kids, schoolwork means homework, for parents it means looking into colleges and, no less important, ways to cut college costs.
Accordingly, traffic to web sites tied to education and football posted significant spikes last month, based on data from Jupiter Media Metrix.
Unique visits to education sites jumped 19 percent from June to August, to 41 million from 34.6 million. In July less than 20 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds visited education sites, but in August that figure rose to almost 30 percent.
Meanwhile, antsy parents--adults ages 35 to 44--posted the second biggest increase in visits to education sites.
Not surprisingly, some of the country’s largest public universities, those with student bodies numbering upwards of 30,000, drew throngs of web surfers.
The web site of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign drew 1.9 million unique visitors, followed by the web sites of the University of Michigan and the University of Texas, with 1.7 million unique visitors each for the month of August.
Another pair of behemoth schools, Penn State and Ohio State, came in at No. 11 and No. 12, respectively, in terms of traffic. Ohio State attracted 1.2 million unique visitors in August and Penn State got 1.3 million.
The Ivy League colleges also posted a strong showing, with Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania all showing up among the top-20 education sites.
But college educations being as costly as they are these days, visitors were also flocking to scholarship sites. Fastweb attracted 3.0 million unique visitors, and UPromise drew 2.2 million unique visitors.
Fall is also synonymous with football, both college-level and professional. To that end, Jupiter Media Metrix notes that traffic to the web sites of the National Football League is mounting.
Traffic to the NFL Internet Network, which includes the web sites of all NFL teams, spiked 90 percent between July and August, from 2.6 million to 5 million unique visitors. In August 2000, the site received just 3.5 million visitors, about 43 percent less.
The month of August also witnessed the further decline of once-great portal AltaVista. As recently as May, the site was in the top-15, receiving 15 million unique visitors. But traffic to the site has since plummeted roughly 54 percent. In August, just 6.9 unique visitors dropped by AltaVista, which is now a stripped-down directory site.
Web surfers are also rapidly losing interest in Napster, the once formidable music-trading network. Traffic to Napster in August tumbled, causing it to drop to No. 44, with 7.4 million unique visitors, from No. 28, with 10.9 million visitors in July.
Nearly two years ago, the music industry began accusing Napster of facilitating song piracy, and the ensuing legal battle ultimately shut the service down. Napster is supposed to relaunch this fall as a subscription-based service sanctioned by the record labels.
But so far that hasn’t happened, and web users continue to look to other free music-download services, such as BearShare and LimeWire.
|
TOP 50 WEB PROPERTIES August 2001 |
|||||
|
Property |
August Visitors (000 |
July Visitors (000 |
June Visitors (000) |
May Visitors (000) |
(%) Chg over Prev. 3 Months’ Avg |
|
1. AOL Time Warner Network |
78,543 |
73,310 |
72,477 |
70,701 |
8.8 |
|
2. Microsoft Sites (3) |
67,402 |
63,894 |
61,512 |
61,350 |
8.3 |
|
3. Yahoo (2) |
64,683 |
64,388 |
59,907 |
57,559 |
6.7 |
|
4. Terra Lycos (5) |
38,818 |
37,631 |
33,277 |
32853 |
12.2 |
|
5. X10.com (4) |
34,622 |
39,567 |
34,188 |
28,603 |
1.5 |
|
6. About (7) |
29,428 |
28,496 |
25,949 |
25,667 |
10.2 |
|
7. Excite Network (6) |
28,679 |
28,685 |
26,589 |
28,186 |
3.1 |
|
8. eBay |
24,900 |
22,129 |
23,263 |
19,236 |
15.6 |
|
9. Vivendi Universal Sites |
23,001 |
21,707 |
15,581 |
-- |
23.4* |
|
10. Amazon |
22,950 |
21,576 |
19,972 |
20,016 |
11.8 |
|
11. CNET Networks |
21,989 |
20,906 |
19,006 |
18,581 |
12.8 |
|
12. Walt Disney Internet Group (13) |
21,496 |
20,050 |
19,308 |
19,876 |
8.9 |
|
13. InfoSpace (12) |
20,767 |
20,712 |
21,101 |
20,236 |
0.4 |
|
14. eUniverse Network (16) |
17,290 |
14,581 |
13,560 |
13,835 |
23.6 |
|
15. Viacom Online (14) |
17,139 |
16,881 |
14,308 |
12,839 |
16.8 |
|
16. Google.com (15) |
16,653 |
15,159 |
13,567 |
12,579 |
21 |
|
17. AskJeeves |
14,496 |
14,390 |
13,931 |
13,899 |
3 |
|
18. Real.com Network (19) |
14,054 |
14,171 |
14,229 |
12,124 |
4 |
|
19. AT&T Web Sites (20) |
13,290 |
12,516 |
10,841 |
11,151 |
15.5 |
|
20. iVillage (18) |
13,267 |
14,187 |
9,082 |
7,603 |
28.9 |
|
21. Ticketmaster Sites (22) |
11,946 |
12,237 |
10,838 |
11,156 |
4.7 |
|
22. NBC Internet Sites (21) |
11,807 |
12,288 |
13,644 |
19,363 |
21.8 |
|
23. Gator Network |
11,041 |
11,278 |
10,754 |
10,269 |
2.5 |
|
24. iWon (25) |
10,931 |
10,023 |
10,056 |
10,157 |
8.5 |
|
25. Columbia House Sites |
10,830 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
26. The Weather Channel |
10,612 |
9,989 |
11,351 |
10,585 |
-0.3 |
|
27. GoTo.com Network |
10,389 |
11,266 |
9,758 |
10,539 |
-1.3 |
|
28. ClassMates.com Sites (31) |
10,305 |
9,534 |
9,241 |
9,150 |
10.7 |
|
29. NextCard.com (50) |
9,904 |
6,780 |
7,755 |
-- |
37** |
|
30. EarthLink (27) |
9,825 |
9,894 |
9,007 |
9,524 |
3.7 |
|
31. American Greetings (34) |
9,712 |
8,936 |
8,439 |
8,862 |
11 |
|
32. Colonize.com (29) |
9,290 |
9,708 |
9,938 |
8,336 |
-0.4 |
|
33. AmericanExpress.com (38) |
9,157 |
7,954 |
7,010 |
6,474 |
28.1 |
|
34. SBC Communications Sites (33) |
9,079 |
9,011 |
8,488 |
8,352 |
5.4 |
|
35. BizRate.com (43) |
8,934 |
7,307 |
7,279 |
6,176 |
29.1 |
|
36. FortuneCity Network (35) |
8,889 |
8,890 |
7,774 |
8,188 |
7.3 |
|
37. Homestead.com (30) |
8,640 |
9,553 |
7,868 |
8,084 |
1.6 |
|
38. LookSmart (32) |
8,590 |
9,192 |
8,595 |
9,711 |
-6.3 |
|
39. MyPoints Sites |
8,512 |
7,831 |
8,203 |
7,307 |
9.4 |
|
40. Travelocity (36) |
8,476 |
8,782 |
7,841 |
7,443 |
5.7 |
|
41. Monster.com Sites (45) |
8,309 |
7,205 |
6,512 |
7,069 |
19.9 |
|
42. Gannett Sites |
7,845 |
7,712 |
7,061 |
6,931 |
8.4 |
|
43. EA.com and Applications (41) |
7,647 |
7,717 |
-- |
-- |
-0.9* |
|
44. Napster Digital (28) |
7,421 |
9,869 |
10,450 |
10,909 |
-28.7 |
|
45. Homestore.com Network (37) |
7,352 |
8,694 |
7,217 |
7,563 |
-6 |
|
46. RealNames.com |
7,302 |
-- |
-- |
6,554 |
11.4 |
|
47. News Corp. Online |
7,183 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
48. iPlace.com Sites (40) |
7,105 |
7,819 |
-- |
-- |
-9.1* |
|
49. Juno Online Services |
7,074 |
-- |
7,277 |
7,426 |
-3.8** |
|
50. AltaVista Network (44) |
6,940 |
7,250 |
14,098 |
15,145 |
-42.9 |
|
Underline
indicates a site not in the Top 50 in July |
|||||
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Top 20 Education Sites |
|
|
Site |
August unique visitors (000) |
|
1. Fastweb.com |
3,041 |
|
2. UPromise.com |
2,155 |
|
3. UIUC.edu |
1,845 |
|
4. UMich.edu |
1,679 |
|
5. UTexas.edu |
1,671 |
|
6. Berkeley.edu |
1,608 |
|
7. MIT.edu |
1,521 |
|
8. Cornell.edu |
1,457 |
|
9. Harvard.edu |
1,452 |
|
10. UMN.edu |
1,418 |
|
11. PSU.edu |
1,313 |
|
12. Ohio-State.edu |
1,224 |
|
13. UPenn.edu |
1,211 |
|
14. K12.ca.us |
1,180 |
|
15. Virginia.edu |
1,103 |
|
16. Arizona.edu |
1,071 |
|
17. Wisc.edu |
1,055 |
|
18. Washington.edu |
1,048 |
|
19. Indiana.edu |
1,046 |
|
20. Stanford.edu |
1,012 |
| Source:
Jupiter Media Metrix
|
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September 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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