Salem-News.com Sees Record Day for Web Traffic

A positive story about a young woman helping wounded veterans leads to the site's most visited day.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - Salem-News.com received just under 60,000 unique visitors Tuesday, February 19th 2008, and so far this is the highest traffic day reached in our three and a half year history.

A unique visit is logged by the counter/usage page each time a new IP visits the site. If students and teachers from a large organization like Salem/Keizer Schools visit the site, their visits are logged as a single visit for the day as the IP address is the same.

A clearer idea of what happened yesterday is gauged by the "pages viewed" count, which was 79,539.

The story that brought all of this on, Pin-Up Girl Works for Ill and Wounded Veterans, is a story about a young woman from Southern California who is described as "The New Betty Grable" who is dedicating her life to bolstering the morale of wounded military veterans.

In other words, it was a positive story.

"Pin-Up Girl Works for Ill and Wounded Veterans" was added to digg.com, one of the nation's biggest news agregators, at 5:33 PM. By 6:00 PM last night we were exploring why the site was loading slower than usual, and soon the digg.com URL began showing up and we knew that we were getting hit by thousands simultaneously.

In our three and a half years of existence, the largest day of unique visitors was just slightly over 43,000. Each time our stories are featured nationally there is a lingering effect with regard to our traffic count. Big days bring an influx of new return visitors every time.

The future is bright.