Friday, December 18, 2009

Traffic down at Miami Herald, Kansas City Star web sites

The latest Nielson study of traffic at the nation's top 30 newspaper web sites shows traffic at the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star -- the two McClatchy papers on the list -- declined compared to a year ago, and compared to last month.

MiamiHerald.com had 1,751,000 uniques in November 2009, down 22% compared to a year ago.  And down 146,000 from last month when it had 1,907,000 uniques.

KansasCity.com had 1,614,000 uniques in November 2009, down 13% compared to a year ago.  And down 161,000 from last month when it had 1,775,000 uniques.

The two McClatchy sites weren't alone; more than half of the top 30 newspaper web sites lost unique users in November 2009. 

Click here for the November results.

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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

well there was a presidential election last year, not to state the obvious, all knowing one.

Anonymous said...

Credit to those papers that had increases. That's quite a feat. Where's the Sac Bee? You'd think the mother ship site could crack the top 30???!!! That's got to be very disturbing in the Sac market, which should get all the political junkies. Who gets all the uniques in Sac?

Anonymous said...

The secret is to keep building on a presidential election year traffic. McClatchy papers didn't and that's not encouraging.

Anonymous said...

The Obama-friendly paper sites - NY Times, LA Times, SF Chronical, Chicago Tribune, McClatchy papers, etc. were all significantly down.
The Wall St. Journal, Washington Times, NY Post were up. The Fox News phenomenon may be holding true at more conservative sites. You could definitely make that case by these figures. People are wising up.

Anonymous said...

Why does KC get more traffic than Sac? Sac is a bigger market and a government town. Who crunches these numbers?

Anonymous said...

Re: KC Red Star & Sickle hits: Half these numbers could be due to the McClatchy employees, if they have to use the web page to sign in to work several times a day. Rumor has it some papers even count refreshing pages as hits, and employees are encouraged to refresh OFTEN. Given the knowledge that newspaper are fudging liars, why would anyone believe these numbers?
Pssst, pass it on, liberal socialists ruin everything they touch.

John Altevogt said...

I'm told that if you sign on to The Star at least 3 times a week that you're considered to be a "subscriber". If that's true, it's not just the online data they're fudging. It's not like these numbers are heavily regulated, and if these papers are willing to lie to their readers why wouldn't they lie to the reporting agencies also? I believe nothing I read from The Star.

Anonymous said...

After the Red Scar lost its ‘Clown Car’ driver, readership went downhill. The people that counted on four letter words and fourth grade level opinions were left in the dark. Zieman has to figure out how to hire the little lady back without really hiring her back. Gee, maybe they could name Carzilla's column, Retread, and feature her Obama DNC regurgitations.

Anonymous said...

The KC Star is straight up pathetic.

Anonymous said...

It's not just newspaper sites that are down. MSNBC, CNN, Amazon, eBay, MySpace and many others have dropped significantly in traffic since September 2008. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook are up tremendously. This is where people are spending more time.

It has less to do with the Miami Herald, KC Star and these other sites and more with the preference for this type of social media at the moment.

Anonymous said...

They’re just not that into you...McClacthy

Anonymous said...

Why does KC get more traffic than Sac? Sac is a bigger market and a government town. Who crunches these numbers?

I understand they have a contract with the Climate Research Unit at The University of East Anglia. However, when asked, they responded that they have lost much of the original data, but have worked out a computer program that adjusts for lost or contradictory data.

They also reported that they thought there was a great future in Creative and Adjustable Statistical Systems (C-ASS) and were working with former Vice President Al Gore aboard his 125 foot houseboat, "The Caulk Suckers", to form a partnership.

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:17 Smile