Herald website leaps ahead

The New Zealand Herald's website jumped well ahead of its competitors during February - thanks in part to extensive coverage of the America's Cup, the cyanide letter threat and the cricket world cup.

According to data from internet ratings agency Red Sheriff, nzherald.co.nz drew 764,919 unique visitors during February. The TVNZ site nzoom.com drew 413,365 unique visitors and the INL site stuff.co.nz 387,832.

The Herald site delivered almost 16 million page impressions during February, compared with 9 million for nzoom and 8.6 million for stuff.

Although the Herald has consistently outranked the other two sites since the ratings system was established by major New Zealand online publishers last July, the February numbers were a dramatic boost.

Readers were drawn in particular to the Herald's America's Cup pages, including continuous race commentaries and online photo sales.

On February 28th, the day Team New Zealand broke its mast during America's Cup racing, the Herald site delivered over one million page impressions for the first time in its 4-year history.

That capped a record week for the site. From Monday-Friday last week, the Herald recorded an average of over 110,000 unique visitors per day.

Red Sheriff