Automotive sites revv up traffic

Hong Kong - Smart Cars website has seen its online traffic increase more than 2000% in the past week, catapulting the auto site into the number one position for the first time in 2007.

New online data from Hitwise shows that for the week ending 8 December, Smart Cars (www.smart.com) was the most popular website in the automotive industry, holding 9.77% of the market's share of visits.

Smart Cars website outranked other popular websites Porsche (www.porsche.com), Honda Japan (www.honda.co.jp) and Honda Hong Kong (www.honda.com.hk).

Appledaily.atnext.com, the online version of Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, directed 54.12% of traffic to Smart Cars.

Daily percentages show a peak in traffic of 78.86% from Apple Daily online to Smart Cars on 4 December, meaning possible advertising for Smart Cars or an article appearing on Apple Daily online drive increased traffic, Hitwise data shows.

Prior to the spike in traffic from Apple Daily Online, for the previous week ending 1 December 2007, the main source of traffic to Smart Cars was from search engines Yahoo! Hong Kong Search (search.hk.yahoo.com) and Google Hong Kong (www.google.com.hk).