Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US
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March 22, 2006
Gawker Stalker Maps Doubles Gawker's Traffic
On March 14, Gawker launched Gawker Stalker Maps, which allows you to view New York City celebrity sightings on an interactive map. The market share of visits to Gawker doubled for the week ending March 18, 2006 versus the previous week. How can we be sure that it was Gawker Stalker that caused the increase? Search term data shows that for the week ending March 18, 'gawker stalker' accounted for 11.7% of search visits to Gawker, and an insignificant number the week before. While traffic dropped over the weekend, the spike in visits to Gawker on March 21 can be attributed to an AP news story on Gawker Stalker Maps which was picked up by USA Today and MSNBC, among others.
What does this mean for Gawker and the blog community? Gawker was one of the leading blogs in terms of market share of Internet visits, and Gawker Stalker catapulted it into the top 10. What's difficult about tracking blogs online is that the content is largely consumed via RSS. But this move makes Gawker a destination site, making it much more attractive to advertisers, and gives users a reason to come back. Gawker's average session time increased by 35% last week, from 4 minutes 3 seconds for the week ending 3/11/06 to 5 minutes 29 seconds for the week ending 3/18/06.
Gawker bills itself as "the source for Manhattan media news and gossip," but its audience extends far beyond New York and New Jersey. For the four weeks ending 3/18/06, 26% of visits to Gawker came from users in New York and New Jersey. Other leading states were California, accounting for 12% of visits, Texas (6%) and Florida (4%). It appears that the Stalker Maps will allow Gawker to extend its reach among both Manhattanites and users throughout the country, and continue to attract a broad demographic audience.
Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 06:55 PM
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