BSkyB Clocks 36 Percent Web Traffic Gains On Virgin Spat

BSkyB websites saw the fastest traffic growth of any UK site in March, according to latest comScore data. While Google, Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo remain the most-visited sites, Sky’s property clocked 9.7 million visitors – 36 percent more than the previous month and by far the biggest gaining media site, though Vodafone also saw 47 percent growth. ComScore attributed the surge to trailing sky.com in several advertising campaign materials produced by the satellite TV provider as it launched a marketing war against Virgin Media. The cable company has referred Sky to regulators after failing to secure carriage for Sky’s channels (Virgin’s sites were only up four percent). That could suggest a significant number of people were at least interested in checking out Sky’s offers with a view to switching. Meanwhile, Facebook saw 38 percent growth to 2.7 million visitors, Six Apart’s hosted blogs grew 30 percent to 3.5 million and Bebo was up nine percent to 7.8 million.