Posted in Website Design Tips	March 23, 2007

TMZ’s constantly updated celebrity news draws more unique users by a wide margin.

By Adam T. Sutton, Managing Editor, Mequoda Group LLC

Entertainment news hub TMZ dominated the Mequoda Blog 100 this month, generating more unique visitors during January than the two closest contenders combined.

TMZ’s count of 2,237,461 unique visitors last month surpassed number two USA TODAY by almost 950,000. In addition, the Mequoda Blog 100 ranks TMZ’s average sessions per user, page views per user and seconds per user over USA TODAY’s, beating the blog from the country’s most widely circulated newspaper in all statistics measured.

TMZ is not a “comment on the stars” gossip blog. It is a genuine news source increasingly cited by established news organizations like the FOX News Network. TMZ earns its credibility by breaking stories and constantly feeding its millions of readers updates throughout the day on the rise and fall of Hollywood stars.

AOL and Telepictures Productions created TMZ in the traditional blog format. TMZ’s features include:

• Free content
• Exclusive content
• Multiple posts throughout the day
• User commentary
• Image intensive interface
• Over 50 RSS feed segmentations
• Extensive free photo and video galleries

TMZ does not charge for any of this content or sell any products. Its main revenue source is advertising. The millions of users who visit TMZ every month increase the website’s advertising inventory, which is sold to sponsors in exchange for an ad on the site. As the numbers show, the TMZ blog is undeniably an effective advertising inventory generator.

“The rapid rise of blogs from the mainstream media companies validates the importance of the format. As blogs become more a part of the mainstream media, it is important to track who they are and how fast they're growing,” said Mequoda Group Chief Information Architect and Managing Director Don Nicholas.

To do that, Mequoda Group and Compete will be continually monitoring over 300 of America’s most popular media blogs and reporting to our readers the top 100 every month. The Mequoda Blog 100 is based on monthly unique visitor counts, aggregating multiple-blog sites across the publication. If you know of or publish a media blog that you feel should be monitored by Mequoda, please email it to Blog100@mequoda.com for addition to our database.

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