New Way of Judging Top 30 Sites: The 'Stickiness' Factor

By: Jennifer Saba For the month of November, Nielsen provided E&P for the first time with a new way of measuring Web popularity -- the total minutes spent by users for the top 30 newspaper Web sites in the country. Is this a more valid a way to judge popularity than unique users or page views?

The total minutes for the Houston Chronicle and the Arizona Republic rival those of the country?s largest newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, even though they attract far fewer unique users. Time spent at WSJ.com was 72 million minutes. At the Chronicle, it?s 64 million and AZCentral it?s about 62 million minutes.

Yesterday we hailed the recent surge in uniques for Newsday, but the average time spent at its site is not high.

Most newspapers, including Newsday, made strides over the past year in the stickiness factor. The Arizona Republic and the Orlando Sentinel, for example, increased time on their sites by about 172% and 124% respectively.

There were drops in the time spent on some newspaper Web sites, year-over-year: USA Today, San Diego, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago among others.

More people spent time at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (18 million minutes) compared to its sister publication the Seattle Times (13 million minutes). The Post-Intelligencer increased the time spent year-over-year 35% while it declined 15% at the Seattle Times.

Below is the list of the top 30 newspaper Web sites and the total time spent for the month of November. They are ranked in order of unique visitors so you can see that the order changes when considering time spent. The percent change compares November 2007 and November 2006. Please note this is a custom made list for E&P. (Nielsen is owned by E&P's parent company.)
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Top 30 Newspaper Websites, November 2007

Site -- Total minutes (000) -- % Change/minutes

NYTimes.com -- 550,035 -- 9.3%
USATODAY.com -- 136,603 -- (-27.8%)
washingtonpost.com -- 145,083 -- 30.4%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 72,110 -- 60.9%
Newsday -- 28,203 -- 42.3%

Boston.com -- 79,712 -- 31.5%
LA Times -- 44,259 -- (-21.2%)
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 40,610 -- 10.7%
New York Post -- 37,346 -- 46.5%
Village Voice -- 10,092 -- 89.1%

Chicago Tribune -- 31,690 -- (-14.8%)
Daily News Online Edition -- 19,180 -- 12.8%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 46,371 -- 1.2%
The Houston Chronicle -- 64,166 -- (-0.7%)
Chicago Sun-Times -- 19,963 -- 11.2%

DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 9,041 -- (-18.5%)
International Herald Tribune -- 4,011 -- (-19.0%)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 18,197 -- 35.2%
The Seattle Times -- 13,296 -- (-15.1%)
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 8,558 -- (-21.3%)

Ottaway Newspapers -- 9,015 -- 11.5%
Azcentral.com -- 62,735 -- 172.8%
Baltimore Sun -- 11,101 -- 4.4%
Philly.com -- 19,053 -- 87.2%
Orlando Sentinel -- 17,218 -- 124.5%

NJ.com -- 22,656 -- 7.5%
The Politico -- 7,672 -- N/A
MercuryNews.com -- 6,954 -- 38.6%
Detroit Free Press -- 18,733 -- (-27.8%)
KansasCity.com -- 8,442 -- 3.3%