• by Masha Geller , May 5, 2003

After two days of spam rants, one of our readers wrote me saying I sounded "angry." Well, here's something non-threatening for a change: numbers.

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that sports, dieting and gardening are ruling the web. Football fans drove 113% more traffic to the NFL Internet Network during the week ending April 27th, as surfers turned to the Web to get the latest updates on the NFL draft.

As one of the fastest growing brands for the week ending April 27, the NFL Internet Network more than doubled week-over-week to 1.7 million surfers from home, as compared to 798,000 surfers the week prior. Fans at work also boosted higher audience levels, with more than one million office workers surfing the site. Top pages viewed from home and work were draft tracker pages providing surfers with the latest draft developments for each round.

In addition to the draft and the NBA playoffs, baseball and Nascar racing fans pushed traffic levels at other major sports sites. Lycos Fox Sports jumped 67% to 587,000 visitors from home, while car racing fans flocked to Nascar.com, driving traffic up 40%. NBA Internet Network spiked 23% to nearly one million visitors. Both AOL Sports and ESPN surged 21%, attracting 1.6 million and 4.1 unique visitors, respectively.

Elsewhere on the web, as the summer season draws near, traffic to WeightWatchers.com spiked 46% at home for the week ending April 27th, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The site attracted 628,000 unique visitors, with 29% of the audience visiting the food and recipes page. Traffic to eDiets.com also jumped 42% to 837,000 unique visitors at home, as compared to 590,000 the week prior.

Additionally, Gardenweb.com rose 33% at home for the week ending April 27th, with 288,000 unique visitors surfing the site. More than 10% of the site's surfers logged onto the message boards, to discuss and share tips with other gardeners.