Compete Ranks Top Olympics-Related Online Content and Search Referrals for February 2010

BOSTON, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Compete, a Kantar Media company, today released its ranking of the top Olympics-related content and search referrals for February 2010.  The Olympics were in full swing in February, and NBC Universal reaped the benefits of its exclusive media rights as millions of visitors flocked to ncbolympics.com. They were, however, out-muscled by the Yahoo! Sports Olympics-related content (sports.yahoo.com/olympics), which experienced a staggering 16 million unique visitors (UVs) in February -- a 375 percent month-over-month increase. Finally, the search referrals tell an interesting story of the individual athletes, with skier Lindsey Vonn, snowboard phenomenon Shaun White and widely-popular figure skaters Johnny Weir and Joannie Rochette leading the way.

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Yahoo! Sports Olympics Content Takes the Gold

In February, NBC Universal captured over 10 million UVs on nbcolympics.com, up from approximately 440 thousand in January. The gold, however, went to the Yahoo! Sports' Olympics content (sports.yahoo.com/olympics), which rose from roughly 3 million UVs to more than 16 million in just one month. The bronze went to ESPN's Olympics content (espn.go.com/olympics), as roughly 2 million consumers logged on in February. Finally, the CBS Sports Olympics content (cbssports.com/olympics) rose 2,944 percent from a paltry 5,000 UVs in January to about 150 thousand in February.

Bumps, Bruises and Boarders

Out of the roughly 16 million UVs that visited Yahoo! Sports' Olympics content, the incredible story of U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn, who was suffering from a serious shin injury, dominated online search referrals from major search engines.  Inspired by Vonn's performance and gold medal win in slalom, the term "Lindsey Vonn" came in at number two in search referrals share on sports.yahoo.com/olympics. Vonn also received roughly four percent of total search referrals to Olympics content on that site, trailing only to "Vancouver 2010," which had six percent share.

Interest in U.S. snowboarder Shaun White boosted visits and searches referring traffic to the top Olympics-related content, as well, sparked by his back-to-back gold medal wins and a half-pipe accident that left him bloodied, but relatively unharmed. In fact, on espn.go.com/olympics the phrase "shaun white snowboarding accident" accounted for 1.3 percent of all search referrals and "shaun white accident" received about 0.9 percent. Though his accident ranked higher on ESPN's Olympics content, the term "shaun white" was in the top 10 search referrals on Yahoo! Sports' Olympics content, accounting for 0.6 percent of all search referrals share for sports.yahoo.com/olympics in February.

Figure Skaters Steal the Show

Thousands of athletes competed for glory, but it was the figure skaters who captured online viewers' attention. U.S. male figure skater Johnny Weir dominated search referrals with a number six referral ranking for both sports.yahoo.com/olympics (0.79 percent) and espn.go.com/olympics (1.22 percent). Meanwhile, Canadian women's figure skater Joannie Rochette, who competed despite her mother's recent death, also ranked high with search referrals, receiving 0.6 percentage share on Yahoo! Sports' Olympics content and 1.4 percent on ESPN's Olympics content.

Information regarding industry categories is drawn from Compete PRO Enterprise, a digital intelligence solution used by some of the internet's most successful Web sites.  For more information on Compete PRO Enterprise, please contact Gavin Blackmore at [email protected].

About Compete

Compete, a Kantar Media company, helps the world's top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Leading marketers such as Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Hyundai Motor America, Upromise, Chrysler, and Verizon Wireless rely on Compete's services to create effective online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns.  Compete's online behavior database -- the largest in the industry -- makes the Web as ingrained in marketing as it is in people's lives.

Compete was founded in 2000 and is located in Boston, MA, with offices throughout the U.S.  For more information about us, please visit http://www.competeinc.com/, or to join the conversation visit http://www.compete.com/.

About Kantar Media

 Established in more than in 50 countries, Kantar Media enables exploration of multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, internet, social media, and outdoors worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors -- Intelligence, Audiences and TGI & Custom.  Combining the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insights to more than 22,000 customers around the world. (www.KantarMediaNA.com).

About Kantar

Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group's services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.

For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com

SOURCE Compete