• by March 16, 2003

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that traffic to various financial sites spiked higher during the week ending March 9th, with office workers logging online to conduct money management activities.

"Money management is top of mind for many surfers, as tax season swings into full gear," said Patrick Thomas, senior Internet analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "The Web allows ease of financial management with the ability to pay bills, check balances and trade stocks."

"The continued economic uncertainty filling the headlines provide even more incentive for surfers to find ways to manage their finances easily and quickly," added Thomas.

Traffic to Bank One Card Services surged 40%, attracting 722,000 surfers from work. Personal finance management site, Quicken jumped 18% in traffic with 720,000 surfers compared to 609,000 surfers the previous week. Traffic to Washington Mutual Bank's site jumped 16% to 447,000 surfers from work, while Ameritrade drew12% more surfers to 526,000 at work unique visitors. Citibank attracted nearly 1.4 million surfers, driving traffic up by 8%. Top pages for these sites reveal that surfers were logging on to manage their finances.

Elsewhere on the web, traffic to the Washington Times website rose 27% at home, for the week ending March 9th. The news site attracted 404,000 unique visitors compared to 318,000 the week prior, with the top story attracting 35% of the total audience. The most visited page featured an article on Helen Thomas, member of the White House press corps, and the role she played at a recent press conference with President Bush.

Additionally, NetRatings report that Dilbert is as popular with working online users as ever. United Media spiked 51% at work for the week ending March 9th, and of the 487,000 unique visitors, 46% of the audience visited the dilbert.com site.