Internet Volume of Chabad Rises 21%

An interesting internet study, has recently been published by 4Wall and JInsider. Tittled "the Jewish Internet Metric Study."

The study found, that the word "Chabad," has a monthly volume of 218,603; and a rise of 21%, in the last four years. Reform Judaism fell 66%

4Wall, in conjunction with its Jewish initiative JInsider, released on Wednesday, the Jewish Internet Metric Study; which takes a business-oriented, top-level look, at the Jewish Web, using the practices of the renowned consulting firm McKinsey as a guide.

The full report is available at www.jinsiderblog.com/JIM.zip
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We chose a broad spectrum, of 32 Jewish-related search terms, and studied their current traffic volume; as well as how that traffic has changed, during the past four years (June ’04 - June ’09).

The entire sample set saw an average decrease in search traffic of 25 percent; with only a few search terms, becoming more popular over the four-year period.

Here are the top five increases, and decreases, in popularity:
Avg. Monthly Volume Total 4yr ChangeRosh Hashanah 164,774 :49%Chabad 218,603 :21%Challah 92,547 :16%Matzah 73,453 :10%Yom Kippur 206,091 :9%

Judaica 288,552 :-54%Reform Judaism 16,185 :-66%Anti-Semitism 326,378 :-74%Jewish Dating 190,974 :-85%Kabbalah 393,361 :-87% ___________

Educational and Information Sites: The Power of a BrandIn the education/information category, there are a number of strong sites, with Chabad emerging as a brand leader. Chabad’s main website, consistently serves as an example, of what a successful educational/informational Web presence can look like.

Over the past year, its traffic rose by 37 percent, and is now significantly above, the other sites studied. In contrast, the Web presence of other religious movements – Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Judaism – was much poorer; though OU.org does moderately well. _______________
Jewish educational and informational sites, are also taking advantage of social media – with My Jewish Learning’s “jewlearn” Twitter account, and Aish’s YouTube presence, as successful examples – but none has a more focused brand, across social media, than Chabad.

Chabad has leveraged its international identity, in coordination with its local chapters, to create a social web experience, that is both down on a local level, and part of something “larger.” The result, is quite compelling.
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The most instructive section, is the traffic and engagement comparison between the websites of the major Israeli papers: Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post; and the American news sources: JTA, The Jewish Journal, The Jewish Week, The Forward, The Jewish Exponent and The Jewish Press.

The sum of all the major American Jewish news sites, does approach the level of significant traffic reached, by the Israeli sites. Unique VisitorsTotal U.S. 808,516Jpost.com 1,454,649 Haaretz.com 691,467 __________
Beyond just site traffic, visitor engagement patterns also suggest, the American Jewish news industry, is too fragmented on the Internet.

Not only do visitors spend significantly more time per visit, when perusing the Israeli sites; but many more of those visitors are “regulars:” (people who visit more than once per month), and addicts (people who visit more than 30 times per month).

In fact, because of this “addict” phenomenon, a quarter of traffic to haaretz.com and jpost.com, is generated by just 2 percent of their users. In contrast, only jta.org, has any sort of measurable traffic, generated by “addicts” – 11 percent.