The Irish Times Website has recorded an increase of almost 20 per cent in site traffic to over seven million page impressions in the last six months, according to the most recent audit.
The electronic arm of the Audit Circulation Bureau, ABC Electronic, recorded a total of 7.2 million page impressions, or Web page accesses, for the month of March. Almost 600,000 individual users visited the site in the same period.
These figures compare with page impressions of over six million for the last audit period in October last year. They represent an increase of more than 20 per cent in accesses on the same period in 1998.
As in previous years, the site was busiest on St Patrick's Day when more than 320,000 page impressions were recorded in 24 hours. Coming in a close second was the launch of The Irish Times's portal site, ireland.com, which attracted almost as many visitors.
Similarly, ireland.com saw an unprecedented expansion in the newspaper's online presence incorporating a range of new sites including technology, business, weather, sports and a Dublin city guide.