Record traffic levels for Yahoo Buzz publishers

Yahoo may well be on target to increase sales by more than the 70% it predicted if its social news site continues to perform as well for media publishers as it has done during the first few weeks of closed-beta.

by Helen Leggatt

Late last month, Yahoo launched Yahoo Buzz, its answer to Digg, Mixx and the increasing number of social news sites. The difference with Yahoo Buzz is that it will only accept content from selected publishers whereas other sites allow anyone to make content submissions.

Some publishers involved in the closed-beta have already seen a tremendous increase in traffic, particularly those whose stories made it on to the Yahoo homepage. Salon.com registered the highest number of visitors since the site began 12 years ago, clocking up 1 million unique visitors after a story made it onto the Yahoo homepage, while U.S. Magazine reached their second highest traffic day after they too appeared on the homepage.

TechCrunch notched up their highest traffic day ever, and over 1,000 comments were left on the post featured on Yahoo Buzz, showing that users weren’t just clicking and moving on, they were engaged enough to comment.

Smoking Gun, Portfolio.com, Dallas Morning News and Imaginova.com all reported significant traffic increases after Yahoo Buzz links made it to Yahoo’s homepage.