Virginia Tech Massacre Increases Traffic for Yahoo News
It is very hard to measure brand popularity just by everyday habitual searches. However, when a tragedy happens and the nation turns to its news sources for more information, trends and brand’s strength is revealed.
This was clearly shown this week with the tragedy over at Virginia Tech. As the details started to reveal, more and more people turned to their “news sources” for updates. And the results? Yahoo’s traffic increased by 66% compared to only 6% on Google (compared to traffic the previous day). This is according to recent Hitwise report released this week.
Other sites which saw a spike in traffic were Facebook (555%), ABCNews.com (245%), MSNBC.com (161%), FOXNews.com (64%) and CNN.com (59%).
Does this mean that Yahoo News is better than Google? Personally, I think that it is. But then again it is very hard to compare as Google only scrapes headlines, groups them and links back to the source and Yahoo looks and feels like an actual news site.
[via SEWblog]
