The number of people visiting New Zealand's top websites is much larger than previously estimated, according to the first figures released under a new internet ratings system.
The RedSheriff rankings, supported by New Zealand's major online publishers, were released today and cover the week of October 6-13.
They rate participating websites according to the number of "unique visitors" during that period. Because the system is able to distinguish between different computers and repeat visits to a site are not counted, the figures give a good indication of the number of people who have used each site at least once during the period.
The top-ranked publisher was Telecom's Xtra, operator of xtra.co.nz and xtramsn.co.nz which together chalked up almost 620,000 unique visitors in the week.
In second place was Wilson & Horton's
New Zealand Herald
website, nzherald.co.nz, which drew more than 170,000 unique visitors during the week.
Online news services stuff.co.nz and nzoom.com were third and fourth respectively.
RedSheriff's South Asia Vice President, Philip Whinnen, says the release of the first RedSheriff Ratings for New Zealand exposes an industry that is more extensive, and in better shape, than many had predicted.
"For the first time, New Zealand's top website publishers have got an accurate picture of the extent and nature of their audiences."
He says the larger than expected audience numbers can most likely be explained by the way RedSheriff measures site traffic.
"It doesn't matter whether you're accessing a site from home, work, school, or even an internet café, all that activity is included in our audience measurement, unlike other methods that rely on a data sample. It means site owners and advertisers now know accurately how many people visit the key websites."
XtraMSN marketing mirector Chris Thompson said earlier estimates of his sites' audience that tracked a panel of web surfers' online behaviour had undercounted the number of site visitors.
"This confirms what we've suspected all along — that XtraMSN’s audience is significantly larger than previous measurement methods were able to report."
The introduction of RedSheriff internet ratings follows a decision in July by a group representing New Zealand's major internet publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies to use a common measurement standard. All of the country's major online news services are participating in the ratings research and a number of other major websites are currently setting up the necessary systems to allow their traffic to be tracked.
According to John Stewart of advertising agency The Internet Bureau, the new measurement data "confirm that New Zealanders are changing their media consumption, and that a greater proportion of advertising expenditure is justified being spent on online advertising".
In December RedSheriff and Phoenix Research will release the first results of their New Zealand internet Universe survey. The results will provide a detailed insight into the demographic profile of New Zealand internet users and a broad view of internet usage in New Zealand.
Top 10 Online Publishers -- October 6-13, 2002
Rank - Publisher - Unique Visitors
1 - XtraMSN* - 619,256
2 - Wilson & Horton - 170,849
3 - Stuff - 166,518
4 - NZoom - 146,974
5 - Trademe - 78,914
6 - Kachingo - 48,415
7 - Seek - 40,504
8 - Tourism New Zealand - 24,573
9 - ACP - 24,198
10 - IDG - 17,061