A sharp rise in the number of people using the Irish Timeswebsite, www.ireland.com  has occurred, according to figures just published from ABC Electronic, writes Conor Pope.

The number of visitors to the site has increased by more than a third since the last audit period, and ireland.com now has the largest audience of any Irish news and information website.

Traffic on ireland.comin March was up 32 per cent and now stands at 17.2 million page impressions per month. The number of unique users accessing the site in the same period increased more significantly - up 38 per cent to 1,185,069.

Welcoming the ABC figures, ireland.comeditor Deirdre Veldon said she was delighted with the results and "very encouraged" by the growth in numbers of individual users of the site

She said it indicated readers were "responding well to our recent moves to make new areas of the site free to access, while we continue to develop a large cohort of loyal subscribers to premium content".

"The figures reflect extremely well on the quality of the content and services provided, and are a huge validation of the people who work at The Irish Timesand ireland.com," she added.

Una O'Hare, general manager of Itronics - the parent company of ireland.com- stressed the importance of having the website's audience verified by an independent and trusted organisation such as the ABC as it painted a clear picture of the progress that was being made.

She said she was "very pleased with the performance this year" and said that traffic to the site would continue to grow significantly. "This is an enormously positive result for us," she said.

"It shows that we are moving in the right direction. We have a loyal and growing subscriber base, and the free-to-access areas of the site are proving increasingly attractive to a wider audience."

Ms O'Hare also noted that the growth of the site's audience has been mirrored by a significant increase in advertiser demand.

Demand for advertising space on the site is now consistently outstripping supply, and the advertising inventory has been sold out for several months already this year.

Contributing factors to the growth in the ireland.com's audience include a redesign in late 2006 and the decision to make the breaking news service available free of charge. The addition of editorial blogs, web television, daily image galleries and video streams has also proved popular.

The audit, taken in March 2007, was conducted by ABC Electronic, which is the accepted industry standards body.