If you’re curious about what your employees did last week, chances are they’ve either balanced their online checkbooks or spent some time at Dilbert.com. At least that’s what Nielsen//NetRatings is
reporting today.
With Tax day fast approaching, traffic to various financial sites spiked higher during the week ending March 9th, with office workers logging online to conduct money management
activities, NetRatings reports. 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%. The interesting thing is, people aren’t going to tax-related sites like IRS.gov yet (we are a nation of
procrastinators, after all), but checking their bank balances instead.
What else are people doing during working hours? Dilbert was quite popular last week, with traffic to United Media spiking 51%
at work. NetRatings says that of the 487,000 unique visitors, 46% of the audience visited the dilbert.com site. I won’t dare guess if that’s at all related to checking bank balances…
On the home
front, advertisers running on the Washington Times website last week certainly got their money’s worth, as traffic rose 27% at home. 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. Also, traffic to LifetimeTV.com jumped 40% to 302,000 unique visitors at home, for the week ending March 9th. Twenty-five
percent of the site's audience entered for a chance to win $10,000 and a trip to the Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa.