That said, MSNBC.com came in first again. The site is ranked number one in the Current Events and Global News category for April 2003, according to the latest audience data released by Nielsen//NetRatings. Year-over-year unique visitors to MSNBC soared nearly 50% with traffic peaking during March and April 2003, as readers continued to log on to the Internet for breaking news and events in record numbers.
During the month of April, MSNBC captured an audience of 21.7 million unique users. MSNBC led all other online news sites in this category, including both CNN General News and CNN.com (rollup), which includes SI.com and CNNmoney; Yahoo! News; AOL News and NYTimes.com. MSNBC led all other sites in overall reach with 16.3% of the Internet audience turning to MSNBC for news and information.
"We are proud to maintain our position as the leading news source on the Internet," said Scott Moore, president of MSNBC.com. "Readers turned to MSNBC for breaking news coverage during the war, and we are pleased that many of these readers continued to access MSNBC for postwar coverage and analysis throughout the month of April."
That goes for all news sites. The war is over, but consumers have made the Internet their primary source of news during the daytime and it's likely to stay that way.