Fans Deluge Olympics Websites

Top Sites Streak Ahead As Fans Deluge Olympics Websites

Nine million page views in 24 hours also shows Portals’ pulling power according to Nielsen//NetRatings Web Olympics Category Index.

AUCKLAND: September 23, 2000 – As Olympics interest builds among web surfers around the world, American site, NBCOlympics.com managed to climb back to top place yesterday on the back of a 16 percent surge in Page Views.

The Nielsen//NetRatings global Web Olympics Index reported a massive 4.43 million Page Views on the site during the previous 24 hours --- 800,000 pages up on the previously most popular site, olympics.com, which came in runner-up despite increasing Page Views almost two percent.

The Nielsen//NetRatings ‘Web Olympics Index’ provides a daily snapshot of web traffic to 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.

Key findings from the most recent Index show that:

 10 percent of web sites in the Nielsen//NetRatings Web Olympics Index attracted up to 90 percent of global web traffic, with the top five sites in the Index remaining unchanged except for the switch between nbcolympics.com and olympics.com.

 US-based online paint and stain company Olympic Paints is inadvertently capturing a proportion of surfers who are landing on the site accidentally when they mistype the web address of the official Olympics site www.olympics.com. Up to five percent of Australian web traffic to the official site is being referred from the Olympic Paint Company site whose web site address is olympic.com (the same as the official site but without the “s” on “Olympics). (SEE SIDEBAR)

 sports.yahoo.com, which has stayed near the top of the Index since the Sydney 2000 Games began last Saturday, experienced a 50 percent increase in Page Views, indicating that surfers continue to visit portals where they know they can view a wide variety of content including results and medal tallies.

 Hong Kong based orientaldaily.com.hk entered the Index for the first time, as did Japanese site sydney.asahi.com. Both these sites have been featuring heavy Olympics content.

Table 1: Most popular Olympics-related domains surfed globally from home: Sept 21

Web domain

Total Page
Views Sept 21
Total Page
Views Sept 20
% Change

Page Views
per person

1 nbcolympics.com 4,430,978 3,824,986 15.8% 14
2 olympics.com 3,601,466 3,542,417 1.7% 13
3 sports.yahoo.com 2,761,485 1,840,553 50.0% 8
4 usatoday.com 1,543,855 1,397,089 10.5% 7
5 sports.yahoo.co.jp 1,459,781 1,193,937 22.3% 9
6 sportsillustrated.cnn.com 794,803 655,311 21.3% 5
7 nikkansports.com 778,655 583,598 33.4% 7
8 olympics.com.au 293,578 281,367 4.3% 7
9 orientaldaily.com.hk 159,148 127,940 25% 9
10 sydney.asahi.com 138,428 114,321 21% 5

The next 15 most popular Olympics-related domains in alphabetical order were:

Domain Description
aftonbladet Swedish newspaper featuring Olympics coverage
examiner.ie Irish Examiner newspaper featuring Olympics coverage
fanmail.olympic.ibm.com Fanmail site for fans and athletes
fr.sports.yahoo.com French sports site within Yahoo!
gamesinfo.com.au Australian-based transport/schedule site for the Games
ireland.com Irish Times featuring Olympics content
joc.or.jp Official Japanese Olympic Committee site
jo.wanadoo.fr French Olympic information site
news.bbc.co.uk BBC web site featuring Olympics content
olympics.sportline.com CBS Olympics sport site
olympiaden.nu Swedish Olympics site
olympic.org Official IOC site
oneolympics.nzoom.com Official NZ Olympic Committee site
opasia.dk Danish site focusing on the Olympics
silly2000.com Parody site of the official Olympics web site

Portals continue dominance in Category Index

 Among the Web Olympics Categories Index, Portals have continued their dominance, generating over 9 million page views yesterday and attracting a unique audience in excess of 738,000 – an 11 percent increase over the past 24 hours.

 The News & Information category continued to shoot up the Index, moving from fourth to second place on the back of a 16 percent increase in unique audience to 571,187 and a 15 percent increase in Page Views to 3.9 million pages.

 Despite nbcolympics.com’s dominance of the domain Index, the TV/Broadcast category slipped 28 percent overnight in terms of unique audience and 17 percent in terms of total Page Views.

Table 2: Most popular Olympics-related categories surfed globally from home: Sept 21

Category Unique Audience % change Total Page Views
% change Time per person
Portal 738,072 11% 9,027,593 6% 5 mins
News & Information 571,187 16% 3,915,469 15% 5mins
Sports 517,663 4% 3,848,960 24% 5 mins
TV/Broadcast 372,896 -28% 4,846,654 -17% 8 mins
Official 302,978 -9% 3,708,967 -7% 8 mins
Miscellaneous 11,191 -54% 88,311 -2% 13 mins

SIDEBAR: OLYMPICS BOOM FOR PAINT SHOP SITE

Every key stroke counts when you type in an Internet address -- as a United States paint seller can attest this week after its website was suddenly inundated with unexpected hits from all round the world.
Among others, the online paint and stain company, Olympic Paints, whose Internet address is www.olympic.com. has been copping a deluge of surprised Australian visitors.
The latest Nielsen//NetRatings global Web Olympics Index shows fully five percent of all that country’s web surfers arriving at the official Olympics website had been redirected after first finding themselves reading about American paint products.
The paint supplier’s site differs only from the official Olympics site www.olympics.com, by a single ”s” in its address, olympic.com.
And it hasn’t just been the Aussies who have been arriving at the official site the long way round, said Brian Milnes, managing director, ACNielsen eRatings.com, Pacific:
“Our international data also shows 40,000 Americans wanting to find out about the games first went to the paint site.
“I think this shows how important a single letter can be in searching for an Internet address,” he said.
“There is food for thought here for all businesses using the Web to look at the ways in which people can be easily misdirected if you don’t get the correct name clearly established in their minds.”
Proving Mr Milne’s assertion true, New Zealand surfers wanting sports information who typed in www.olympic.co.nz this week would have instead found themselves on a software sales site.
Ends sidebar.

The Nielsen//NetRatings Web Olympics Index
The Nielsen//NetRatings Web Olympics Index measures online user activity of more than 165,000 at home panellists across more than 250 key Olympics and related sites in Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, UK and the USA.

About Nielsen//NetRatings
Through strategic partnerships between NetRatings, Nielsen Media Research and ACNielsen, the Nielsen//NetRatings audience measurement service collects real-time data from more than 165,000 Internet users around the world. The U.S. panel sample currently consists of 57,000 at-home users and 8,000 at-work users. International panels are under development with over 100,000 at-home users currently being measured. These panels collectively represent the largest media research sample of Internet users in the industry.

Nielsen//NetRatings uses unique technology capable of measuring both Internet use and advertising to provide the most timely, accurate and comprehensive Internet usage data and advertising information in the global marketplace. Nielsen//NetRatings tracks the entire spectrum of Internet user behaviour, leveraging proprietary data-collection technology from NetRatings, Nielsen Media Research's 50 years of expertise in research and audience measurement, and ACNielsen’s international leadership in offering market research information covering more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.

About ACNielsen eRatings.com
ACNielsen eRatings.com is a venture between ACNielsen (NYSE: ART) and NetRatings Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT). ACNielsen is the world's leading market research firm, offering measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics, consumer attitudes and behavior, and new and traditional media in more than 100 countries, and NetRatings is the leading provider of Internet audience measurement technology and analysis. Through the Nielsen//NetRatings service, ACNielsen eRatings.com is creating the first global service for tracking audiences, advertising and user activity on the Internet in more than 30 countries worldwide.

About NetRatings, Inc.
NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT) provides Internet audience measurement and analysis services that enable its customers to make informed decisions regarding their Internet strategies. NetRatings delivers accurate and timely information collected from a representative sample of Internet users and augments it with detailed, flexible reporting and in-depth analyses.
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