Herald site climbs on to global podium

The Herald Online's Olympic News website has broken into the top 25 Olympic websites worldwide, according to ratings released yesterday by AC Nielsen.

"The Herald's success attests to the site's own pulling power, and to the very high level of enthusiasm for the Games among New Zealanders," said Kerry Hawkins, Director of Sales and Marketing for ACNielsen eRatings.com.

"What we are seeing here is how, despite our relatively small population, a good New Zealand website is showing up alongside international heavyweights in building a strong following.

"The fact the New Zealanders had finalists in the single sculls during this period would have also helped to drive up interest among overseas web surfers coming to a New Zealand website for a local perspective on how their home crowds thought the rowers were going to do."

The 'Web Olympics Index' provides a daily snapshot of web traffic to approximately 250 official and unofficial Olympics-related sites during the previous 24 hours. The service is provided by ACNielsen eRatings.com (a venture between ACNielsen Corp., NYSE: ART and NetRatings, Inc., Nasdaq: NTRT), Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc. and covers 15 countries.

"In this debut on the Index, the Herald now ranks among the top 25 sites -- a terrific achievement," said Hawkins.

A battle every bit as competitive as the Sydney Olympics is being waged between the two global web stars of the Games with nbcolympics.com and olympics.com running neck and neck in terms of Page Views.

Most popular Olympics-related domains surfed globally from home:

1 nbcolympics.com

2 olympics.com

3 sports.yahoo.com

4 usatoday.com

5 sports.yahoo.co.jp

6 nikkansports.com

7 orientaldaily.com.hk

8 olympics.com.

9 number.ne.jp

10 sydney.asahi.com

11 Aftonbladet (Swedish newspaper)

12 dif.dk (Danish Olympic Committee)

13 eurobet.co.uk (Online Betting)

14 fanmail.olympic.ibm.com (Fanmail site)

15 fr.sports.yahoo.com (French site within Yahoo!)

16 gamesinfo.com.au (Australian transport/schedule site)

17 ireland.com (Irish Times newspaper)

18 iltalehti.fi (Finnish Olympic information site)

19 jo.wanadoo.fr (French Olympic information site)

20 news.bbc.co.uk (BBC web site)

21 nzherald.co.nz (New Zealand newspaper)

22 olympiaden.nu (Swedish Olympics site)

23 olympic.org (Official IOC site)

24 opasia.dk (Danish site)

25 silly2000.com (Parody of the official Olympics site)

Click here for Herald Online Olympic News