August data is live and there was plenty of movement with the summer winding down, back to school, back to business, and the kickoff of football season.

Football Season

For marketers, the college and NFL action during football season translates to major ad spend, and as the action heats up, fans jump online to stay in tune. Football sites saw a sharp uptick in seasonal traffic in August, with Unique Visitors (UVs) to the Compete Football category up 92.2% over July, 2009. While NFL.com led the pack with nearly 6.5 Million Unique Visitors in August, fantasy fanatics flocked to cbssports.com (up 41% to 4.35 Million Unique Visitors), fantasysports.yahoo.com (up 79% to 4.75 Million UVs), and fftoolbox.com (up 350% to 579,000 UVs) to start their own seasons.

Fast Movers

Business, mass merchants, and government interest all climbed the ranks in August.

Did you draft Adrian Peterson with the first pick or did you go with Michael Turner instead? That’s right - It’s the time of year to put together the cheat sheets, work through a couple of mock drafts and find the right players to play for you on Sunday and Monday nights. Fantasy football is back and its popularity continues to grow online.

For my analysis, I used category data from compete.com, specifically the Fantasy Sports category. Unique Visitors to the Fantasy Sports category for July has increased 97% Y-O-Y, a big surge when compared to the 5% increase from July 2007 to July 2008. Looking at trends over the last two years, traffic for the Fantasy Sports category peaks during the months of September through December, Fantasy Football season.

Two of the bigger sites that Fantasy players use to manage their leagues are Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and ESPN Fantasy and Games. These sites continue to grow each year:

• fantasysports.yahoo.com had a 9% Y-O-Y Unique Visitors increase
• games.espn.go.com had a 40% Y-O-Y Unique Visitors increase

However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. As you can see in the chart below, those two sites aren’t receiving as much Share of Visits to the Fantasy Sports category as they were two years ago when they captured 79% of the category traffic. Now their combined share is down to just 43% - no longer a duopoly! What could have caused this change? Who is the new kid in town?

Clearly, ESPN’s Streak for the Cash has gotten the attention of some looking to get their daily fix of fantasy fun and information. In one year it has managed to get a 45% share of Visits to the Fantasy Sports category. One way they were able to accomplish this was by differentiating themselves – they attract fantasy players to come back to the site each day to predict winners of matchups and keep their streaks alive - a new twist on an already popular pastime.

So good luck with your picks, and let me know if you have any inside tips to share!

I’m a Manchester United fan and my coworker, Marko, is a Liverpool supporter. The debate about which team is better is pretty simple (especially because United won the league this season) because it’s settled on the field. FIFA passes out a Player of the Year award every year, but that argument is a bit more subjective. Popularity isn’t necessarily proportional to talent, but they are closely related and although we may not be able to crown the best player in the world here, we can take a look at who is the most popular in the U.S. (based on visitors to popular soccer retailers online).

Andy Says: Although Man Utd. can’t officially claim Ronaldo anymore, a lot of his popularity was built while playing for the Red Devils, so I’ll count it as a win, adding Most Popular Player to the list of trophies he has brought to the team (many would argue that he brought “Most Hated Player” too).

Marko Says: It should be noted that Ronaldo was never part of Man U F.C. but rather the Manchester diving team that trains across the street. If you want to talk about proper footballers who have command of their weak side as well as respect the game, just trim that diva of an outlier off the top.

Andy Says: Now that he has officially left Manchester United anyway, I’ll refrain from defending Ronaldo (as it looked like so many opposing defenses did last season). Speaking of defending… when the U.S. defense was gift-wrapping goals in the Confederations Cup, how did Liverpool golden boy, and 6th on this list, Fernando Torres manage to get shut down?

Marko Says: I have to give it to the U.S. national team on this one. They shut down the Spanish team which had not lost a game in their previous 35 matches! Well done gents, well done Tim Howard. Although the Confederations Cup is not the most prestigious of all competitions, America and the world took notice.

It will be interesting to see if that strong showing and the interest in the big match against Mexico today will push U.S. players higher on this list than Landon Donovan at 13th and Jozy Altidore at 20th. We’ll keep an eye on the rankings leading up to next summer’s World Cup. Good luck to the U.S. today!

Another month has come and gone, leaving behind a trail of data and some interesting stories around springtime, sports, and social media. What changes did April bring? We dug into the numbers to look at fast moving sites, traffic trends, and some of the biggest stories of 2009 that we’ve been covering.

Everybody’s asking about it, so we’ll kick it off with Twitter, an ever-growing presence in the social arena. Aided by Ashton, Oprah, and significant media buzz, Unique Visitors to twitter.com increased to 19.4 Million in April, surpassing the New York Times for the first time. Oprah’s first tweet on April 17th delivered the highest Daily Reach ever to the site, with nearly 2% of all Americans online visiting Twitter.

Feeding off Twitter: Sure, Twitter is growing, but so are the many sites that rely on it. Fast movers in April included tweetmeme.com (up 338% to 1.68 Million Unique Visitors), tweetdeck.com (up 69% to 915,000 UVs), twittergadget.com (up 56% to 100,000 UVs), twitpic.com (up 37% to 3.33 Million UVs), and bit.ly (up 53% to 1.81 Million UVs).

Spring Fever: We know that spring is in the air when traffic flow to certain sites pick up. Pet lovers flocked to 1800petmeds.com in April (up 33% to 1.68 Million UVs), green thumbs and lawn caregivers went to scotts.com (up 46% to 710,000 UVs), and traffic to baseball sites were up sharply month over month. Mlb.com was up 62% to 12.25 Million Unique Visitors, and minorleaguebaseball.com also saw a nice bump (up 136% to 1.22 Million UVs). Red Sox Nation will be pleased to know that in addition to kicking off 2009 with 5 straight wins against the hated Yankees, the Sox also won the online traffic battle in April (367,000 UVs to redsox.com vs. 346,000 to yankees.com).

Micro-site Mania: Big upticks to some CPG and food retail micro-sites this month – who said these guys don’t spend online? Between content, contests, and coupons for consumers, some of these branders drove some serious traffic in April. The biggest food related movers included reynoldsrecycled.com (1.64 UVs) Taco Bell’s bajablast.com (up exponentially to 562,000 UVs), cicispizza.com (up 436% to 1.07 Million UVs), Hellmann’s buildtheperfectsandwich.com (up 417% to 441,000 UVs), and kfc.com (up 69% to 1.17 Million UVs).

The Easter Effect: Flower and gift sites saw a nice bump thanks to marketing around the Easter holiday. Ftd.com led the charge (up 282% to 2.73 Million UVs), with proflowers.com (up 59% to 750,000 UVs), and 1800flowers.com (up 26% to 774,000 UVs) also rising in the ranks. Godiva.com also showed a big lift (up 303% to 698,000 UVs).

We’ll keep an eye on all of these stories going forward to see what changes May will bring. In the meantime, find out how a new month of traffic has impacted site traffic, Search, and the overall internet landscape in your industry with all of Compete’s powerful tools on compete.com.

For breaking stories, real time data updates, and to participate in our cool new datanugget Fridays, be sure to follow us on Twitter!

Check out the April monthly data on Site Analytics, Referral Analytics and Ranked Lists.

Highlights this month include a strong showing from MLB.com as the basetball season got under way and the draft bringing a spike to NFL.com during the off-season.

And as a reminder, Search Analytics data is updated daily!

We turned our attention this week to one of Massachusetts and Boston’s greatest traditions – Patriots’ Day and the Boston Marathon. While only a few states recognize Patriots’ Day as a holiday, the running of the marathon has unofficially renamed the day Marathon Monday in Massachusetts.

The Boston race gets a lot of hype every April, but it is only one of many on the annual major marathon circuit. I was curious to see how all the events fared in a search for the generic keyword ‘marathon.’

Among the many informational and running sites, two specific races sites fall in the top twelve. The Boston site does well to grab the top spot on the winner’s podium, but a strong showing is to be expected this time of year. Chicagomarathon.com’s twelvth place showing is almost more impressive considering the race is not until mid-October. Being a top destination for all searches for ‘marathon’ more than five months before race day is all the more noteworthy when you consider that the site for the New York City race (Nov. 1) comes in 24th on this list.

Just as the race takes dedicated preparation, with runners and fans traveling the world for these events, the contest to be the top ‘marathon’ search destination is not one that can be taken lightly.