This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Website traffic surges ahead
02/01/2006
The Executive's website www.scotland.gov.uk has increased its monthly traffic by 22.8 per cent and the number of unique users by 39 per cent over the last year, according to independent figures.
The third annual audit of the corporate site show that in an average month it records more than 3.7 million page impressions and attracts more than 400,000 unique users. The figures exclude users within the Executive's own network.
The outcome continues the upward trend in traffic to the Executive website since it was extensively revamped in September 2001.
Public Service Reform Minister Tom McCabe said:
"These impressive growth figures, provided by an independent audit, clearly demonstrate that people from all around the world are coming to our website in increasing numbers. I believe this underlines the interest in Scotland and the work of the Executive.
"The website is an integral part of our commitment to openness and accountability. It is a source of the most up to date and relevant information on Executive policy and Ministerial activity."
The audit was carried out by ABC Electronic, the not-for-profit, media industry-owned organisation that provides third party auditing services.
ABCe have now conducted audits of the Executive website during the month of November in 2003, 2004 and 2005, allowing direct comparisons to be made. The overall percentage increases in that time have been 47 per cent (page impressions) and 54 per cent (unique users).
Full details for November 2005 (figures in brackets are for 2003 and 2004).
- Page impressions 3,765,658 (2,555,628; 3,066,295)
- Unique Users 407,053 (263,628; 292,145)
- Visits 752,865 (493,997; 585,123)
The Executive is the only central government website that carries out an independent audit of its website traffic.
Audited totals have had all search engine robots, web crawlers and other 'non valid' traffic filtered out.