Seattle’s Allrecipes.com was the number one food and recipe site on the Web for the month of November, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
Nielsen said 3.5 million unique users logged on to Allrecipes.com during the month, representing 30 percent more traffic than rivals like FoodTV.com (2.6 million unique visitors) and MarthaStewart.com (2.5 million unique visitors). Allrecipes.com said the growth represents 42 percent growth over its traffic in October.
Allrecipes.com has never used any paid advertising to attract an audience, and has instead relied on word-of-mouth to spread its message virally. Also, its recipes have not been created by celerity chefs. Instead, the company has built a community in which visitors create and share their recipes and other visitors then review them.