A web traffic winner
Riding the strength of the popular Cash for Clunkers program, which enables car owners to exchange old vehicles for cash, websites for automotive manufacturers enjoyed disproportionate popularity in July, according to new figures from TNS Media's Compete.
Compete just released its most current Competet 250, a monthly ranking of the top 250 trafficked websites.
Apart from the Automotive OEM category, others that benefited in July included Hollywood, owing to summer blockbusters; and online retailers, on account of back-to-school season.
The media industry also witnessed significant highs and lows, with major single-site unique visitor gains and losses.
"Marketers need a mechanism for spotting consumer trends as soon as they begin to emerge, especially as the US economy starts down the uncertain road to recovery," preached Compete Marketing Director Cynthia Stephens.
"The Compete 250 gives marketers a window into online consumer activity and sentiment, which helps them keep a pulse on the market and capitalize on the Internet economy."
In great part because of Cash for Clunkers, automotive manufacturers hit a two-year high of 18.9 million unique visitors, drawing 16% more traffic this July than in June 2008. The top three sites in the category were Toyota.com, GM.com and Fordvehicles.com, which each blossomed by over 20%.
In the last week of July, 1.2 million searchers sought data on Cash for Clunkers; one-third visited an OEM site.
Riding the strength of summer hits like Bruno, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, movie-oriented sites were flooded with film-goer traffic. Movie info site IMDb.com saw 22.8 million unique visitors; Netflix.com, 21.3 million. Both held fast to their positions in the top 50 sites ranked by overall unique visitors.
Flixster.com, Moviefone.com and Fandango.com were among July's fastest-growing sites, racking up 6.58 million uniques (a 22.9% rise over June '09), 6.5 million (20.5%) and 10.04 million (15%), respectively.
e-commerce websites saw a big bump, courtesy of back-to-school shopping. Because of the crisis, consumers are spending more time seeking (and consequently buying) school necessities online.
1.67 million back-to-school related searches were conducted in July, compared to 1.23 million in July '08. Walmart enjoyed 32.6 million unique visitors; rival Target, 29.8 million. Both maintained their ranks among July's top 50 websites.
BedBathandBeyond.com managed to make the top 250 sites this year, growing 21% to 6.23 million unique visitors.
The underdog this year was the news aggregators and social generated news category, which has grown steadily since last year. Combined, all sites rose 4.6% from June '08 to July '09, drawing a total of 53.2 million uniques. Tweetmeme.com was by far the top mover, growing 85% month-over-month and serving 11.9 million unique visitors.
