• by March 2, 2003

If your target market is the multitude of Americans fond of camping, the latest Web traffic numbers suggest that the Internet is a good place to reach them with your message. Nielsen//NetRatings reports that traffic to the U.S. Department of the Interior (http://www.doi.gov) jumped 60% during the week ending February 23, as reservations opened for the busy summer camping season.

Attracting 763,000 surfers from work, traffic to the site soared 60% as compared to 477,000 surfers during the week ending February 160--rising to the top as one of the fastest-growing brands for the week. Traffic from home also increased 60% to 874,000 surfers, compared to 545,000 the previous week. The top site from home and from work was the National Parks Services site, where surfers looking to plan summer camping trips could obtain information and make reservations.

"With campers allowed to book five months in advance, Americans planning their Fourth of July vacations are turning to the Web for their planning and research," said Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "Eager campers wanting to book reservations and tours can now turn to the Web as their primary vacation planning tool."

Elsewhere on the Web, it's baseball, books, Martin Luther King Jr. and the extraterrestrial driving people to the Web.

As the beginning of baseball season nears, traffic to Tickets.com spiked 58% at home for the week ending February 23rd, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The site drew 305,000 unique visitors, with 32% of the site's traffic logging on to the baseball game ticket-purchasing page.

Traffic to Barnesandnoble.com jumped 52% at home to nearly 1.7 million unique visitors for the week ending February 23rd. Bargain hunters, looking to save up to 80% on thousands of books, made up 16% of the site's visitors. Traffic at work also spiked 69% to 1.6 million office workers, as compared to 804,000 unique visitors the week prior.

The Stanford University Web site traffic rose 38% at home for the week ending February 23rd. The site attracted 265,000 unique visitors, with 20% of the site's traffic visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information related to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Traffic to the University of California at Berkeley Web site grew 19% at work for the week ending February 23rd. Fourteen percent of the site's 480,000 unique office workers visited the SETI@home page. SETI@home borrows personal, computers to analyze data in search of weak signals received from telescopes.