Feds Score Well When It Comes to Web Sites

Oh yes, come April, the Internal Revenue Service site will be under siege thanks to the annual tax day mania that hits. But as a new report notes, Uncle Sam has greatly improved its Web site content and development in the past year across the board and the result is more visitors to its online portals.

More than 81 million Americans surfed some sort of government site this past July, representing 42 percent of the overall Internet audience, according to a newly released report from research firm comScore.

And just guess which were the most popular. Weather, of course, ranked up there with 7.1 million visitors, at the Department of Commerce site, which also encompasses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.gov).

The Department of Education (ED.gov) had 7 million visitors, the National Institute of Health (NIH.gov) got 6.9 million visitors, the IRS had 4.2 million visitors and the Social Security Administration (SSA.gov) ended up with 3.3 million visitors.

And new federal site CARS.gov, developed for the "cash for clunkers" automotive incentive, received nearly 2.1 million visitors. The WhiteHouse.gov site traffic was up 88 percent with 1.1 million visitors compared to a year ago when it had just 604,000 visitors. The report noted that the health care reform debate likely also boosted the traffic at Senate.gov (up 93 percent year to year) and House.gov, which grew 73 percent compared to July 2008.

But while those sites had more traffic, the most popular in July was NASA's site, likely due to the Discovery launch. The agency's site saw a 81 percent jump in traffic year over year, compared to July 2008.

The most encouraging news, at least for White House leaders and President Barack Obama, all who have been heck-bent on making Internet technology an actual tool used by the administration, is that the public is loving government sites more these days.

The overall satisfaction rating by the public is about 76 percent at this point, which is actually just 5 to 10 percentage points behind leading ecommerce sites.

Photo courtesy of NASA