RSS becoming a key driver of traffic for NY Times - Feed-related traffic up more than 300%
By - April 18, 2005
The NY Times issued a press release today that claims a massive 342% annual increase in RSS click-throughs. RSS-generated click-throughs totalled 5.9m pageviews in March, representing a 39% increase from February's 4.3 million, the press release said, noting that the Washington and Business feeds were most popular.
The Times offers a variety of RSS feeds - one of the first major newspapers to do so. They publish excerpted RSS feeds, so users have to click through to view the whole story.
It's interesting to look at how the RSS click-throughs for March 2005 compares to the total traffic for that month. The Times reported 5.9 million pageviews from RSS and there were a total of 555 million pageviews for the whole website. So that equates to a little over 1% of the whole site's traffic. A drop in the ocean, in terms of bare figures.
But when you consider that traffic for the whole website only grew by 17% over the past year, whereas the RSS click-throughs grew by 342% in that same period... well you begin to see how RSS is going to be a key driver in growth for the NY Times. Strategically, that's how the NY Times will view this.
I'm sure they're also hoping that in time the volume will increase - which it will, once RSS becomes mainstream.
By - April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comment
| Category: RSS Watch
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Comments (2)
what does rss mean?
Posted: April 21, 2005 3:42 AM
I agree that rss has huge potential for the Times & other publications. But I don't agree that the Times is quite ready for digital, or rss prime time.
Take a personal example, I'm creating a website devoted to Israeli Palestinian peace. One of my features will be a newsfeed composed of the major publications writing on that subject. Guess which major publication will not be in my feed? Right, NYT. Guess which major publication WILL be in my feed? Washington Post. Because the latter has a Mideast rss feed & the former doesn't. Keep in mind that NYT DOES have a Middle East section on its site. It just doesn't have a matching rss feed. Neither does the LA Times, either (the other national paper I wanted to include).
BBC News not only has a Middle East feed, it has an Israel & the Palestinians feed! International Herald Trib has a ME feed (which is how I may indirectly pick up the NYT ME feed). What about NYT??
Posted: April 21, 2005 10:47 PM