Check out the latest Ad Planner 1000 for August 2010. Summer is winding down here in the northern hemisphere. People are finishing up vacations, soaking up the last rays of the summer sun and preparing their children for the back to school season.
Back to School
At least in the United States, back to school sends parents and kids into a frenzy of excitement or dread depending on which way you look at it. But one thing stands in common - shopping! Retailers hoping to cash in on the back to school season saw a spurt in their site traffic during the month of August.
A popular resource for dorm room decorating, ikea.com saw a 14% increase in the number of unique visitors to their site and the home and garden retailer, bedbathandbeyond.com cracked the AP 1000 for the first time at #999.
A new fall wardrobe to start the school year is in order too and this was reflected in the increase in traffic going to clothing retailers sites such as kohls.com (+10%), hm.com (+10%), gap.com (+9%) and jcpenney.com (+9%).
Not surprisingly, sites offering school supplies were also positively impacted by the back to school season: staples.com (+6%) and apple.com (+9%). An interesting but perhaps unrelated trend in the AP 1000 for August was the rise in sites offering computer security software: symantec.com (+10%), kaspersky.com (+10%) and avast.com (+9%).
Getting an early start on homework perhaps? The increase in unique users to reference sites such as thefreedictionary.com (+13%), wikipedia.org (+11%), thesaurus.com (+11%) seems to suggest that many students are diving into school work these first few days of the school year.
End of Summer Travel
Now that we’ve covered some of the top risers in the AP 1000, there are also some declines in site traffic to report too. Travel and hospitality companies saw decreases in people visiting their sites as people were winding down their summer vacation plans.
- Travel booking sites: hotwire.com (-16%), priceline.com (-16%), expedia.com (-13%), kayak.com (-11%), orbitz.com (-9%), travelocity.com (-9%).
- Hotels and airlines: marriott.com (-11%), hilton.com (-11%), and airlines aa.com (-9%), southwest (-9%).
In Tech News
The latest hot trends for social, mobile and location-based services continues to do well with foursquare.com debuting at #985 on the list. Group buying services also continue to gain popularity, groupon.com (+22%), livingsocial.com (entered list). Finally, Michael Arrington’s work ethic seems to be paying off in terms of visitors to his site -- techcrunch.com grew 21% from the month of July to August.
