Richmond Times-Dispatch Parent Buys Richmond.com

As reported on DNN.com late last week, Richmond.com has been purchased by Media General, parent company of Richmond Times-Dispatch and other newspapers in different medium to large markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Richmond.com receives 2.7 million monthly page views, 120,000 monthly unique visitors and an 8.8% share of the Richmond online viewing market.
Richmond.com has been one of the best examples of a non-newspaper-owned geodomain that saw huge traffic (and presumably revenue) figures because of the great content they produced. They had no newspapers to print and could focus all of their efforts into producing great, relevant articles that were important to viewers in the Richmond area. The 2.7 million page views to 120,000 unique visitors shows that people return to the site frequently, proving how important good content is.
I don’t know any details about the deal aside from what I read, but I presume the Richmond Times-Dispatch online newspaper will eventually be integrated with the domain name Richmond.com, which is certainly better than the current domain name they use, InRich.com. Media General will receive the best domain name for the Richmond area as well as a devoted audience.
I won’t preach, but this deal is exciting for someone like myself. My plan continues to revolve around making Burbank.com and Lowell.com websites that are useful and important to people who want to learn more about these cities. As revenue increases, I intend to hire reporters to expand the news offering on the sites, which will increase traffic and revenues.   I hope 2009 will be a year of great growth for Burbank.com and Lowell.com, and if the last two weeks of search engine traffic for Burbank.com is indicative, it’s going to be a very good year.