Afloat.ie, the Irish sailing, boating and maritime website, has reached another high water mark in 2016 informing and entertaining a larger boating audience than ever before.
Based on site analytics, Afloat.ie readership was up 30 per cent on 2015 with more than one million unique visitors and over two million page views to the dedicated Irish boating magazine website.
The just released figure of 1,003,232 unique readers is for the calendar year 2016. Afloat.ie readership has climbed consistently year on year since 2008 but 2016 is the first year it broke the one million barrier.
Afloat's popular online format has a strong returning readership with around 48% of daily visits being return visitors. In fact, over the peak sailing months in 2016 Afloat surpassed its own records for unique (direct) visitors with an average of 80,000 unique daily visitors per month.
Afloat.ie has been working hard to achieve top Google Search rankings and together with a tightly bound community of readers, Afloat.ie's combination of opinion, hard news and features puts it at the very heart of the national conversation on sailing, boating and maritime affairs.
It's a satisfying result to date because the aim has always been to provide Irish sailing and boating clubs, classes and the wider maritime community with comprehensive and reliable information in a dynamic independent site to promote our great sport to the wide audience only the internet provides.
Success this far would not have been possible without our full–time marine journalists, our advertisers, supporters and web developers who are dedicated to promoting Irish sailing and boating.
With many thanks to all our readers and advertisers for your continued interest in Afloat.ie.
You can support the work of Afloat by donating here.
The Afloat team
