The two-hour music production, America: A Tribute to Heroes, broadcast by the television networks on Friday, Sept. 21, produced a surge of traffic to the Web site of the same name, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, a Web audience measurement service.
The site, at www.tributetoheroes.org, attracted 1.2 million unique visitors from the time of the broadcast through the end of the weekend. Its three-day exposure placed it as No. 66 of the top 100 domains visited the week ended Sept. 23. The count measures traffic originating from homes, not from workplaces or automated site crawlers, Nielsen//NetRatings representatives said.
About 35 percent of the total, or 420,000 unique visitors, visited the donations page from the Tribute To Heroes home page, spending an average of five minutes there. The sites audience was composed of 60 percent females and 40 percent males, representatives said.
Other charitable sites experienced a surge of traffic immediately after the World Trade Center attack. During the week ended Sept. 16, 1.1 million visitors went to www.redcross.org; another 1.1 million went to www.helping.org, the audience measurement service said.
The responses show that the Internet “became a tool to allow Americans an easy and convenient means to show they cared through heartfelt donations,” said Allen Weiner, Nielsen//NetRatings vice president and principal analyst. “The Web has the ability to empower citizens and allow them to take action for causes they feel most passionate about,” he said.
The American National Red Cross had not made it into the rankings the previous weeks, but was listed as the 76th most visited site from users at home during the week, Weiner said. The www.helping.org site was No. 75.