The Irish Times website has recorded a 50 per cent increase in traffic in the last year, according to new audit figures. They show that ireland.com continues to be the most popular content-driven site in the State, attracting more than 1.5 million individual users, who generated close to 25 million page impressions last month.
According to ABC Electronic, the electronic media auditing bureau, the website recorded 24.6 million page impressions, or web page accesses, in March, up nearly 50 per cent on the same period last year.
Ireland.com remains the busiest content-driven Irish website, with its nearest media competitor, RTE Online, recording page impressions of 6.7 million, according to independent media tracking company Medialive. Figures for Unison, the Independent Group's flagship web site, show page impressions of 5.6 million a month, while the Irish Examiner's site is attracting traffic of slightly fewer than 4.5 million page impressions, according to Medialive.
The number of individual users accessing ireland.com has increased by 31 per cent in the last year and now stands at 1.52 million.
There has been a 45 per cent increase in the page impressions originating in Ireland since last October, when there were 5.98 million page impressions of Irish origin. That had risen to 8.66 million by last month.
The editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady, said: "These are excellent indicators for the future development of electronic publishing services at The Irish Times. We are showing steady growth in circulation in the print editions as well. The growth in print circulation, taken together with the ireland. com figures, shows that The Irish Times is now a multimedia publisher, and a very successful one."
Mr Nick Chapman, managing director of Irish Times Ltd, said: "It's an impressive rate of growth, building on the investment we have been making in ireland.com. The Internet is essential to the future of The Irish Times . . . We are focusing on revenue generation and moving towards profitability for ireland. com, which is also an essential part of our strategy."
Between October last and March this year, there was a 17 per cent increase in unique users accessing the site from Ireland, the figure rising from 346,942 to 405,922. The foot-and-mouth crisis resulted in a large increase in traffic generally, particularly in the Breaking News section of the site, which saw a 68 per cent increase in traffic from February. There were 3.4 million page impressions in that section last month. The enhanced jobs site which was launched in February has also fared well, with an increase in traffic of more than 160 per cent to one million page impressions from January.
Mr Seamus Conaty, managing director of The Irish Times New Media Division, described the figures as "another outstanding result". He was "particularly pleased with the growth in our Irish users".