Byrne responds to questions about BusinessWeek.com page views

BusinessWeek.com editor John Byrne responded Friday to Silicon Alley Insider, which earlier this week questioned whether the site was in trouble due to lower page view data reported by a third party.

Byrne stated: “I have no idea why the comScore numbers bear no relationship to reality, but here are the facts: In August, traditionally one of the weakest months for business and financial sites, Omniture shows us with more than 7 million uniques, up some 13% from the previous year and nearly four times the comScore data. We recorded some 42 million page views in August, nearly four times as much as comScore reported. We had more than one million downloads alone on our podcasts that month. Our reader engagement is at record levels: some 6,000 comments from readers are made to our stories monthly; the page views on our blogs are up by 25% in the past year.

“We’re the only business and financial website to have won a prestigious National Magazine Award this year, and the only one to be named one of the hottest ten websites in the past two years. We update our site several times a day with original analytical journalism–as many as 25 new pieces of content daily. In the past few months, we’ve broken dozens of stories, from insider trading at UBS, to the hedge fund mess at Bear Stearns, to the stock picking scandal at CNBC, to Wal-Mart’s latest miscues and misadventures. Video is and has been prominently featured on our home page every day, and we have more than 2,000 videos on the site. We’ve just launched a new managing channel that is far superior to anything currently available on the web. In short, we’re alive and well, thriving and growing, offering enterprise journalism every day that makes a meaningful difference to our readers.”

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