• by Masha Geller , January 8, 2003

I wonder how many New Years’ resolutions involved eating less and exercising more? Judging by the traffic to health, fitness and nutrition sites, it was quite a few.

Nielsen//NetRatings today reports that traffic to these sites increased in the last week of 2002. Must have been all those surfers looking to jumpstart their diet and fitness resolutions.

NetRatings reports that during the week ending December 29, more than 3.5 million people logged on to various health, fitness & nutrition websites at home. Leading this group, AOL Health attracted 805,000 unique visitors during the week. WebMD was second with a unique audience of 521,000. eDiets.com led the way for dieting and weight management websites, drawing 480,000 surfers and landing at the No. 3 spot. Rounding out the list, Weight Watchers garnered 302,000 unique visitors for the week.

More of interest to those of us who have already broken that particular resolution, NetRatings reports that the New Year also brings surfers online to get a view of what's to come in 2003. The top two astrology sites attracted more than a million unique visitors from home for the week ending December 29. iVillage Astrology attracted a unique audience of 754,000, while MSN Astrology garnered 689,000 surfers in the same week. Yahoo! Astrology claimed the No. 3 spot with 377,000 visitors.

And lastly, traffic to video games sites spiked at home, for the week ending December 29, with surfers flocking online for cheat codes to games they just received for Christmas. Cheat Code Central took the top spot, with site traffic soaring 91% to 805,000 surfers, as compared to 422,000 the previous week. Traffic to Cheat Planet spiked 90% to 687,000, while Playstation drew 368,000 unique visitors, jumping 69%.

Rounding out the top five fastest growing online games/video game platforms sites, GameWinners grew 67% to 882,000 unique visitors, while XBOX drew 283,000 surfers for the week.