User traffic increases after the closure of TimesSelect

Posted by Erica Mutschler on October 18, 2007 at 4:13 PM

Only a month has passed since New York Times ended the subscription-only TimesSelect, but readers seem to have caught on fast. Within the past month the now free Op-Ed section of NYTimes.com has more than doubled in unique visitors.

Last week the Op-Ed section saw 560,057 unique visitors. A significant increase from the 245,942 visitors in the week ending 9/15/2007. Op-Ed columns claimed 4 out of 5 Most E-Mailed stories in today’s online edition.

An increase in traffic has also occurred for the overall site of New York Times. Within the last month the amount of unique visitors to NYTimes.com has grown roughly 10%. The overall amount of visitors has been around 3.8 million, an increase from the 3.4 million seen a month prior.

TimesSelect was a subscription-based service started by New York Times on September 17, 2005. Subscribers were granted access to the Opinion section, weekly crossword puzzles and Archives. The service wasn’t very popular from the beginning, with only 10% of readers signing up.

With the closing of TimesSelect, readers can now access the Opinion section and Archives from 1851 to 1922 and 1987 to the present for free.

Source: blog.compete.org through I Want Media

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