Nielsen/Netratings put out statistics today for traffic on the 2008 presidential candidate websites in July.

Barack Obama clearly led the field with 717,000 "unique users," followed by Clinton with 437,000 and Edwards with 348,000.  The survey only presented data on candidates with over 100,000 unique users: a bar which none of the other Democratic candidates apparently reached.

On the Republican side, Fred Thompson (still unannounced in July, of course) dominated the field with 381,000 hits.  The website ImWithFred.com was still fairly new then, I think?  And maybe speculation was rife that he would announce?  I'm not sure why else his numbers would be so high --- although he does seem to have a good web team.  It's still odd that Fred Thompson's web traffic would actually surpass Edwards'.  That has to be an anomoly.  Giuliani came in second with 124,000, Romney third with 116,000, 113,000 for Ron Paul and 106,000 for John McCain.

Some interesting points:
1.  Democrats are clearly leading Republicans in website traffic.  The combined total is 1.5 million unique users on the three Democratic sites, and 804,000 unique users on five Republican sites --- nearly half of the Democratic total.  And given Thompson's traffic was probably related to a temporary surge in buzz around his campaign, the disparity is probably much higher.

2.  Although the netroots lean Edwards, he comes in last among the Democratic candidates in website traffic.  Second, although as I wrote about this week, I believe his website is better structured for blogging and interaction with the campaign than either Clinton's or Obama's and would I think be better able to keep visitors there longer, his average time per visit according to Nielsen is by far the lowest --- so it would seem his website is having a harder time keeping visitors, or at least it seems to illustrate that visitors use the website merely to make a donation or check headlines briefly.

Time Per Visitor
Obama     7:51
Clinton   8:17
Edwards   3:43

Clinton's website has spent a lot of time using things like Hillaryhub.com to distribute content.  I would guess that Clinton users rely on her website for their campaign news a lot more than, say, Edwards users, who are well-represented in the blogosphere and have other internet sources.  Any other guesses?

3.  Obama clearly dominates overall, and although Clinton's average time per visitor is a little higher, it's amazing that Obama manages to sustain such a high average time per visitor over basically twice as many unique users as Clinton has.

My question to you:  What do you use your respective candidate's website for?  Do you blog there?  Read headlines?  Read the campaign blog?  Only to donate?