As the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, the Russian version of “Delfi” news portal – ru.delfi.lt – has demonstrated a significant increase in visitors: this portal serves as a reliable news source not only for Lithuanian readers but also for people from Belarus, Ukraine and other countries.
According to the data from “Google Analytics”, from February to March, the number of cookies by ru.delfi.lt had increased by 68% – from 792,000 to 1,329,000 (“Google Analytics” cookies allow identifying IP addresses; a user browsing with different devices may represent multiple cookies).
In a month, the number of page views has increased by 122% – from 5.43 million up to 12.07 million.
Average session duration has prolonged by 13% – from 3.95 minutes to 4.45 minutes per day.
Comparing February and March, the number of cookies from Belarus increased by 114% from 266,000 to 569,000. The number of visitors from Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland and further countries – Germany, the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan – also increased.
"We have been the main news source for the Russian speaking Lithuanian population for already a long time – our readers know where they can find all the most relevant news, and not only related to the coronavirus. The results from the last month have revealed that we are very actively read by visitors from foreign countries, especially from neighbouring Belarus, where people lack objective reliable information about the situation, thus Belarusians, as we can guess, are looking for alternative and reliable sources of information,” says the editor of ru.delfi.lt Oleg Jerofeyev.
In March 2020, Delfi.lt maintained its leading position in all parameters: every day the portal was read by an average of 757,000 visitors, it was 111,000 more users compared to February. “Delfi” visitors had spent almost 34% of the time that is dedicated to all Lithuanian portals. “Delfi” has not only a Russian version but also an English version – en.delfi.
