ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –
Rudaw websites received more than 1.5 million visits in just 24 hours with the numbers still growing, said Hemin Lihony, head of the network’s digital portal.
Google Analytics, a monitoring device used by Rudaw, showed that the network’s different webpages were viewed 1,895,486 times, with the number of unique visitors increasing from 317,000 to more than 1 million.
“This is happy news and quite expected for Rudaw,” said Lihony. “The number could be higher, but we had a slowdown due to technical issues.”
Lihony said that the hot topics in the region, such as the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) have increased the number of Rudaw readers.
For his part, Rudaw web developer Muhammad Najat said that the network had higher goals to reach the widest audience, but that cyber attacks on the site last year had left their mark.
“Last year we faced the biggest number of cyber attacks, which made our readers unable to open the website,” said Najat. “But for the New Year we have been able to provide a better host for the site with the help of a foreign company.”
Rudaw Media Network publishes news in Kurdish, English, Arabic and Turkish on the Middle East region as a whole and Kurdistan in particular.
Each language on the site also has its smartphone and iPad Application, with half a million subscribers in total.
