Sunny days send weather websites soaring

Sunny days send weather websites soaring

Auckland, 13th January, 2004 - With many of the country's four million inhabitants on holiday, a South Island drought, and the hottest January temperature ever recorded, it's no wonder New Zealand's weather related websites have been burning up the Hitwise charts.

The country's official weather watchdog, the MetService ( http://www.metservice.co.nz/) has witnessed its site rise to 25th placing amongst websites visited by NZ users for the week ending January 3rd. 3.5% of all visitors to the website added it to their favourites list in their Internet browsers indicating a desire to return.

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Many other NZ weather websites have been doused in web interest. NZoom Weather ( http://www.oneweather.nzoom.com/) saw its ranking rise to 45th among all websites visited by New Zealand Internet users in the week ending 27th December. The website rose from 67th position the week previous.

Hitwise clickstream data showed the aforementioned MetService site as being third most popular site visited following NZoom Weather, with Metra NZ www.metra.co.nz, a meteorological forecast service 9th, and the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology www.bom.gov.au in 10th position. Weather Online ( http://www.weatheronline.net.nz/ ) is another site to have its day in the sun, finding itself positioned at 20th in the News & Media category for the week ending January 3rd, up from 41st at the start of November with 9.3% of its visitors bookmarking the site.

The dry weather also pushed farmers online with rural website FencePost (www.fencepost.com) increasing its market share to almost 65% for the week ending December 27th, up from 55% at the start of the month.

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