Daype Classifieds

Singapore — Websites of Singapore Press Holdings Ltd (“SPH”) took 30 top spots in the Hitwise Top 10 Rankings in the first 6 months of 2009.

AsiaOne.com, zaobao.com, ST701.com, and hardwarezone.com were once again ranked Number One in their respective categories.

The Hitwise Awards, given out twice a year, recognises websites from over 160 categories. Its Top 10 Website Awards is based on the user visits that a website receives compared to others in their industry.

AsiaOne verticals took six spots in the Top 10 rankings. Ranked Number One were www.soshiok.com and health.asiaone.com for the categories, Food and Beverage (Lifestyle and Reference) and Health and Media (Information), respectively.

These two websites have hogged the top spots since 2008.

In addition, www.divaasia.com, business.asiaone.com and digital.asiaone.com ranked Number Three for Lifestyle (Women’s Sites), Business and Finance (Business Information) and News and Media (IT Media) categories, respectively.

AsiaOne’s travel website travel.asiaone.com ranked Number Four for Travel (Destinations and Accommodation) category. The site has since been rebranded and relaunched as Relax.com.sg.

Zaobao.com and ST701.com were ranked Number One for the News and Media (Print) and Shopping and Classifieds (Classifieds) categories respectively. Both sites also held the top positions in these categories for the whole of 2008.

Hardwarezone.com, a SPH Magazines Pte Ltd website, topped three categories – Computers and Internet (Hardware), Computers and Internet (Social Networking & Forums), and News and Media (IT Media). The site had stayed at the top for Hitwise’s IT categories consecutively over the last few years.

Mr Adrian Tay, Asiaone’s editor, said: “AsiaOne has been embarking on an effort to rebrand our lifestyle sections. Gaining the various top spots is testimony that the team’s efforts and strategy is working. Advertisers too are quick to take advantage, for example, prime spots on our travel site, relax.com.sg, were taken up before it was even launched last month.”

Mr Zheng Wei, Zaobao Online’s editor, said: “This is the fourth year that Zaobao.com has received this award. We are glad to receive strong recognition for bringing news and information to our net savvy readers. We would continue to provide valuable content to our supporters and strive to build Zaobao’s brand in both the print and internet world.”

Mr Vijay Anand , Editor, hardwarezone.com, said:”We’re always tuning in to both the tech industry and our community to figure out the most relevant content and services to quench our savvy audience’s appetite. As such, it’s a delight to have won these awards as it affirms our continued fine-tuning process of our services to maintain and grow our audience.”

Ms Elsie Chua, Executive Vice-President of Marketing, said: “We rolled out enhancements to ST701 cars providing more comprehensive information such as technical specifications, financial information, reviews, photos and videos for new cars. During this period we spruced up the look and navigation of our entire site that encompasses our Jobs, Cars, Property and Shops verticals. These improvements have gone down well with our users and as such they continued giving us their strong support.”

Updated daily, the Hitwise Ranking lists top performing websites across industries and presents a comprehensive overview of more than 800,000 websites. The ranking, generated based on the market share percentage of the websites, can be viewed according to different metrics (visits, page views or average session duration), time periods (daily, weekly and monthly) or area (local websites or all websites).

By AsiaOne
September 23, 2009
source: digital.asiaone.com