UK newspaper upgrades to .COM from .CO.UK and gets massive traffic growth

I just got the August Data from Compete.com and the domain with largest online growth that they are monitoring is UK newspaper The Guardian, Until last month The Guardian Newspaper used to use the domain name Guardian.co.uk but decided to upgrade to .COM however Guardian.com is owned by Guardian Industries so they settled on rebranding their digital newspaper domain name over to TheGuardian.com they also own TheGuardian.co.uk which redirects TheGuardian.com main website.

In the last Month since they moved from Guardian.co.uk to TheGuardian.com they seen a massive increase in traffic growth 1111.75% increase in traffic moving over to the .COM domain name vs last year their growth number is 671,389.51% Growth…

Now I am not saying its all down to the fact they are now using a .COM domain name, I love .co.uk and myself own my own online retail store ScreenProtectors.co.uk and I am launching later in the USA this year and shall be using the domain name Screen-Protectors.com for my US website but do you think that moving over TheGuardian.com domain name is making a difference in terms of what the end user see and then clicks on the link.

If you read further down you shall see that Syria had a huge effect with American Traffic but what I want to know is would that CTR rate be the same if it was .co.uk vs .com

My non UK readers – Would it matter to you? If you seen a newspaper article and it was on Guardian.co.uk would you ignore it as you think its going to be more of a local story vs International story? Would you be more inclined to click on the link if it was TheGuardian.com?

Here is the Compete.com data for August below, Another domain that appears to be making a comeback is MySpace.com the former worlds number 1 social network has been quiet over the recent years and changed hands a few times since launched, MySpace.com once had more traffic than Google.com back in 2006, The company that was once sold for $580 million ends up being sold to Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake for $35 back in 2011…

Do you know anyone back using MySpace.com?

No real surprise to see NFL.com seeing an increase with the new football season kicking off.

Whats your thoughts on the rest of the domains?

TheGuardian.com saw explosive growth in August as the popular online newspaper moved from Guardian.co.uk on July 30 to TheGuardian.com. Comparing TheGuardian.com in August to Guardian.co.uk over the recent months also shows that the news outlet had their best month for unique visitors (UVs) in two years. Using Compete PRO, we can see that Americans were driven to The Guardian for their perspective on the current events in Syria with the keyword “syria” being the eighth most popular keyword for driving traffic to TheGuardian.com.

With the NFL preseason in full swing in August, NFL.com saw its usual August rise in traffic with this August beating last year by more than 25%.

Textbook rental sites Bkstr.com and Chegg.com saw a big increase in traffic in August as students prepared to go back to school on a budget. Despite both sites having their best traffic month in two years, they may be concerned to learn how much traffic they’re losing to Amazon. Chegg sent nearly 7% of their outgoing traffic to Amazon.com and Bkstr.com sent 9% of their outgoing traffic to the online retail giant.

For a more in-depth analysis of August’s monthly fast movers, as well as the list of year-over-year (YOY) fast movers, check out the full blog post!

Check out the updated data on Compete.com. In addition:

• Make sure to read our blog for original analysis from the experts at Compete.
• You can learn more about our industry-specific expertise on our website.
• To understand how we get our numbers, see our data methodology.

DONT FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.COM – @SHARES