Gay websites see traffic surge during Pride
Leave it to Pride Month to bolster gay and lesbian awareness around the world – or at least on the World Wide Web.
According to the monthly analysis of online activity released by comScore Media Metrix, traffic increased to gay and lesbian websites in June as well as sites in many other categories, including gaming sites, entertainment news sites and hotel/resort sites.
Traffic to US-based gay and lesbian sites jumped 23% to nearly 3 million visitors, the comScore report noted, as people across the country celebrated Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.
The category was led by PlanetOut with 742,000 visitors (up 19%), followed by Queer Sighted with 563,000 visitors (up 116%) and LOGOonline with 454,000 visitors (up 17%).
Entertainment news sites saw similarly impressive gains, thanks to the media frenzy surrounding Paris Hilton’s release from prison.
Largely fuelled by national interest in the Hilton scandal, traffic to entertainment news site TMZ surged 37% to 9.4 million visitors for the month, while People experienced a 6% increase to 6.1 million visitors.
The tragic news of the deaths of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and his family drove a flood of traffic to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which jumped 117% to 8.4 million visitors.
Continuing the trend from last month, visitation to travel sites once again increased. Traffic to the hotels/resorts category saw an 8% increase to 34.6 million visitors for the month.
Overall, Yahoo! Sites remained in the top position for the month of June, drawing more than 133 million visitors.
Moving up one spot to the number two position, Google Sites attracted nearly 124 million visitors, while Apple Inc. claimed the number 10 spot with 44 million visitors as the iPhone launch bolstered traffic.
Shopzilla.com Sites and Comcast Corporation each gained four spots to attain the number 32 and 35 positions, respectively.
Finally, Citysearch and The Mozilla Organization both entered the Top 50 Ranking in June, each attracting more than 15 million visitors.
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