The war in Iraq has significantly boosted traffic to online news sites, with the New York Times yesterday reporting record traffic for the first quarter of 2003.

The increased traffic for the prestigious US title and various European sites has been attributed to consumers turning away from television and switching to the internet.

Based on the rise in traffic, opeating profits at the paper's internet subsidiary rose to $3.2 million (€3 million) for the first quarter, compared to just $0.2 million for the same period in 2002. About 66 per cent of the paper's website revenue comes from advertising, with the remainder coming from selling its content to other providers.

The paper's site, NYTimes.com, achieved a record 30.7 million page impressions on March 24th, the first Monday after the US bombed Baghdad. The previous record of 29.2 million page impressions was recorded shortly after September 11th.

Page impressions rose by 34 per cent to 615 million for the whole of March, compared to February's 460 million page impressions. In March 2002 the site had slightly more than 300 million page impressions.

The New York Times is the strongest newspaper franchise in the US and its ability to attract such high levels of traffic indicates that online news sites are gaining ground on traditional media such as television and radio.

According to the British web monitoring company, Hitwise, audiences for 24-hour news channels have fallen since the outbreak of hostilities, but traffic for online sites has increased.

Virtually all newspaper sites in Britain have experienced a surge in usage, with Guardian Unlimited recording 107 million page impressions in March. The top five newspaper sites in order of traffic in Britain in March were: the Guardian, FT.com, the Sun, Times Online and the Daily Telegraph.

While the traffic for newspapers sites has increased greatly, in the US the most popular sites remained television based ones like MSNBC and CNN.

The BBC also benefited from increased traffic levels with its new international site, BBCnews.com receiving more than 130 million page impressions in March, compared with 72 million in February.

Mr Nigel Chapman told the Guardian recently: "The increased traffic to our online services is a reflection of the current appetite for information and a heightened interest in international affairs worldwide."

While newspaper sites around the world have performed well as a result of the war, sales of their print editions have not held up.