Daily Research News Online no. 3676 - Tsunami Drives Charity Traffic

Tsunami Drives Charity Traffic

January 4 2005

UK charity web sites have seen a fivefold increase in usage as Internet users rush to give their support, according to data from Hitwise. The Disasters Emergency Committee and a Tsunami blog site are among the biggest risers.

Following the tsunami disaster on December 26th, Humanitarian web sites now represent 0.29% of all online visits. The site of the UK's Disaster Emergency Committee (www.dec.org.uk), an umbrella organization which co-ordinates the UK's national appeal for humanitarian crises overseas, is the most visited Charity site with more than a third of the sector's share. The appeal for donations to the crisis has lifted the site 50 places up the ranking to a clear no.1: in fact, the overwhelming response to the appeal has resulted in people having difficulty making donations online and instead visitors are advised to make a donation by telephone.

Oxfam and the British Red Cross are the next most visited Charity web sites, whilst the blog site (tsunamihelp.blogspot.com), which provides news and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts, is the 10th most visited Charity web site.

Most visited Humanitarian web sites, December 29th 2004
Rank Name		Domain	Market Share
1	Disasters Emergency Committee	www.dec.org.uk	36.70%
2	Oxfam GB British Red Cross, Blue Peter Welcome Home	www.oxfam.org.uk	11.55%
3	Appeal	www.bluepeter.redcross.org.uk	7.37%
4	British Red Cross	www.redcross.org.uk	5.95%
5	All About Giving	www.allaboutgiving.org	3.47%
6	Reuters AlertNet	www.alertnet.org	2.22%
7	The Hunger Site International Federation of Red Cross and Red	www.hungersite.com	1.81%
8	Crescent	www.ifrc.org	1.73%
9	Christian Aid	www.christian-aid.org.uk	1.61%
10	tsunamihelp.blogspot.com	tsunamihelp.blogspot.com	1.52%

Hitwise stats are based on daily monitoring of more than 25 million Internet users in their interaction with over 500,000 web sites across 160 industry categories. The company is online at www.hitwise.co.uk

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.