WineSpectator.com Reaches 55 Million Page Views for First Nine Months of 2008

Annual unveiling of Wine Spectator's Top 10 drives additional surge to website, following new highs in first three quarters

Posted: Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Driven by intense interest in the unveiling of Wine Spectator's Top 100 wines of 2008, WineSpectator.com drew nearly 600,000 site visits and more than 4.7 million page views in the first half of November alone. Those numbers came on top of new traffic highs the website reached in the first three quarters of 2008.

From Nov. 1 through Nov. 17, during which Wine Spectator unveiled its Top 100 Wines of 2008, the website saw a huge spike in traffic. WineSpectator.com drew a total of 592,585 site visits, which generated a total of 4,731,874 page views—a ratio of nearly eight page views per visit.

During the countdown week, the Top 10 of 2008 earned more than 924,851 page views alone, and yesterday, in its first day on the site, the PDF list of the full Top 100 Wines of 2008 was downloaded 33,038 times.

A total of more than 700,000 wine searches were conducted during this time on both Wine Spectator's main site and on its new mobile site, mobile.winespectator.com.

This surge continues the website's strong growth in traffic from 2007 to 2008. From Jan. 1, 2008, through Oct. 31, 2008, WineSpectator.com had nearly 7 million visits, a 20 percent increase over the same period in 2007. In the first three quarters of 2008, the website also had 55.4 million page views, a 10 percent increase over 2007.

WineSpectator.com, launched in 1996, offers access to more than 204,000 wine reviews in its online database, along with tasting reports, exclusive ratings newsletters, auction price data on collectible wines, articles, editors' blogs, videos and more. The annual countdown of Wine Spectator's Top 10 Wines of the year, along with the unveiling of the full Top 100 Wines of the year, is the site's most popular feature.

Currently on Wine Spectator Online:

Tasting Highlights: South Africa
11 new wines from South Africa that showcase the country's improving wine quality
Wilson Winery Owners Buy Jepson
Sonoma couple now owns five wineries as they add Mendocino property to their company
Unfiltered: Jamie-Lynn Sigler Undresses for a Cause
Plus, caveat emptor at a Paris auction, ill-advised jug-wine anesthesia, St.-Emilion gets un-reclassified, again, and Foster's unveils the largest winery-based solar energy system in the U.S.
Wine, Tea and Chocolate Improve Mental Performance
Scientists find that a diet rich in all three works best for elderly study participants
Top Stories of 2008
Brunello fraud, fake wines, Montelena for sale or not? The year was full of serious news, hotly debated wine issues, fun and surprises