Allrecipes.com Claims No. 1 Spot Among Food and Cooking Web Sites; Surpasses FoodTV.com, MarthaStewart.com, Cooking.com and Epicurious.com, According to Nielsen/NetRatings

Business Wire, Jan 17, 2001

Business Editors, Food Writers

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 17, 2001

Allrecipes.com(R) starts the new millennium by leaping into the number one spot in the Food and Cooking Web Site category.

The company has grown to become the number one most-visited online food or cooking site by developing a high quality community-based recipe resource that saves busy folks time and money while aiding them in the daily quest to prepare simple tasty meals at home.

In addition to high traffic, the site's unique content and valuable grocery and meal planning tools, such as automatic shopping lists, have attracted many leading Consumer Package Goods companies (CPG's) such as Betty Crocker and Hershey's to leverage Allrecipes.com's customized online partnership opportunities for their brands. Allrecipes offers CPGs the ability to target consumers during the meal planning process, while they are making their purchasing and brand decisions. Allrecipes.com's no-cost marketing effort is based on good old-fashioned "word of mouth," while other sites depend on expensive marketing campaigns, support from proprietary catalogs, magazines or cable networks.

The monthly Nielsen/NetRatings rankings for December 2000 placed Allrecipes.com above Food TV.com for the first time with over 2.2 million unique visitors. Food TV.com dropped to second place with 2.1 million unique visitors and MarthaStewart.com, Cooking.com and Epicurious.com rounded out the top five(1). Allrecipes.com has achieved a 200% increased traffic growth from Q4 99 to Q4 2000 and exceeded growth expectations in all facets of the company's services and business goals for the year. Not surprisingly, Allrecipes.com has consistently dominated the Food and Cooking Web site category for "At Work Use" in fourth quarter 2000, dutifully answering the call of busy working parents nationwide as they ask the question, "What will I make for dinner tonight?"

Allrecipes.com's business philosophy and statistical data mirror what experts and surveys have stated for the past year. As revealed in the Food Marketing Institute's survey Beyond Foodservice, How Consumer's View Meals, meal solution options are of high importance to consumers and a strategic business opportunity (2). The founders of Allrecipes.com have long known the strength and power of community, more recently cited by researchers at many of America's top analyst firms -- The Gartner Group, The Yankee Group and Forrester Research -- as a crucial component of a successful Internet company(3).

President and CEO Bill Moore confirms, "Our loyal consumers have validated that our product is not only necessary, but practical. They have voted us into the number one spot with their repeated clicks and high praise through word-of-mouth. We are thankful and continue in our plans to grow and exceed their expectations."

About Allrecipes.com

Allrecipes.com(R) (www.allrecipes.com) is the number one most-visited community-based Web site offering unique food ideas and resources, including recipes, meal ideas, meal preparation tips, nutrition analyses, shopping list and recipe-scaling tools, culinary ware and news. Founded in 1997, Allrecipes.com makes cooking, learning and shopping easy and fun for the novice to the experienced cook. Allrecipes.com offers tens of thousands of user-submitted and third-party recipes; a free, semimonthly e-mail newsletter, Recipe Notes; and an online marketplace featuring kitchenware and specialty food items hand-selected with the recipes in mind. Based in Seattle, Washington, Allrecipes.com has been featured in countless high-profile television and print features, and has received numerous accolades and awards.

Allrecipes and Allrecipes.com are registered trademarks of Allrecipes.com, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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                        ----------------------------------------------
                           Unique Visitors  At work  At work  At work
                            Home and Work     usage   usage    usage
                        ----------------------------------------------

     Property/Site             Dec-00       Dec-00   Nov-00   Oct-00
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All Recipes -- Property       2,200,651     740,032  976,933  939,585
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   TV Food Network --         2,158,509     640,849  901,119  844,966
        Property
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 Martha Stewart Online        1,594,545     608,961  657,325  643,778
       -- Domain
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Cooking.com -- Property       1,507,027     325,660  710,219  686,794
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   epicurious.com --          1,360,225     347,438  563,390  640,469
         Domain
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