Web Traffic: The Eyeballs of December

Electronic Gaming Business, Jan 28, 2004

Rank  Site                      Market Share  Nov. 2003  Oct. 2003
1     Yahoo Games               10.11%        1          1
2     Pogo                      9.72%         2          3
3     Yahoo Sport Fant. Footb.  5.74%         3          2
4     Yahoo Fant. Sports        4.31%         4          4
5     Neo Pets                  4.05%         6          5
6     Yahoo Fant. Basketball    3.03%         5          9
7     Sandboxer                 2.85%         10         11
8     MSN Gaming Zone           2.75%         7          6
9     Gamefaqs                  2.61%         8          7
10    ESPN Fant. Footb.         1.52%         9          8
11    Lycos Gamesville          1.39%         11         14
12    GameSpot                  1.16%         12         13
13    Cheat Planet              1.07%         12         24
14    Gamewinners.com           1.02%         16         18
15    Yahoo Fant. Hockey        0.96%         13         10
16    Pogo.com Popit            0.96%         15         20
17    Pogo.com Solitaire        0.89%         19         16
18    MiniClip.com              0.87%         18         26
19    Cheat Code Central        0.81%         21         31
20    RuneScape                 0.66%         24         25
Source: HitWise

Never underestimate the power of male pattern fantasy, as the December traffic among game sites shows. Fantasy sports dominates the ratings, with Yahoo demonstrating why it posted great financials last quarter as well. As usual, cheat and hint sites rise in December as gamers hunt for tips about how to get through all of those new games. The rankings get muddied by spyware, a program loose on the Web that seems to be hijacking traffic and feeding it to Sandboxer.com, a mediocre gaming site. More deserving of traffic is the fastrising MiniClip.com, a U.K. site with some very clever games and media clips. It is previewing what looks to be a hilarious Bush Shoot-Out game to premiere on Presidents Day Feb 16. It includes Dubya defending the White House from invasion (in bullet time) and Condoleeza Rise sporting an automatic. Why don't U.S. casual gaming sites have this kind of imagination?

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