Barack Obama's Website Receives Most Visitors Among Presidential Hopefuls

BarackObama.com, Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign website, led all the other candidate's websites for the most visits to their campaign websites, according to The Nielsen Company. The Senator's website enjoyed 717,000 unique visits in July, according to Nielsen. Obama was far ahead his fellow Democratic presidential hopefuls, with John Edwards at 437,000 visitors and Hillary Clinton at 348,000 unique visitors.

For the Republican campaign websites, Fred Thompson's site, ImWithFred.com drew the most unique visitors in July, attracting 381,000 visitors even though Thompson had not officially announced that he will be running for president on the Republican ticket in July. Fred Thompson starred in the popular drama, "Law and Order" and also served as a Senator in Tennessee. Part of Thompson's strategy has been to use the internet to gain political exposure. With Thompson's announcement that he will run, traffic from ImWithFred.com has been redirected to Fred08.com.

The second most popular Republican campaign website was Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York. His website received 124,000 unique visitors. Mitt Romney's webpage came in at number three, with 116,000 visits. Ron Paul and John McCain received 113,000 and 104,000, respectively.

Senior Director of Median Analytics at Nielsen, Carolyn Creekmore, said, "Consensus has been that Republicans have been slower to take advantage of the Web in their presidential campaigns, but Fred Thompson may be taking a cue from his Democratic counterparts. She continued, "Rather than shying away from buzz, the Thompson campaign is actively engaging in an online conversation. Thompson's online announcement is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's."