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soon after the blogosphere started noticing that usa today’s social experiment wasn’t quite working, they issued a press release saying the exact opposite.

USA TODAY announces that its website, USATODAY.com, recorded a 20% year-over year increase in traffic for the month of July 2007 and a month-over-month growth of 24% according to Nielsen/NetRatings. It was also reported that more than 10.6 million unique visitors came to USATODAY.com in the month of July.

the problems with the numbers, however, is that the month-over-month increase is not a sustained growth, and as they point out in the press release, is a result of the simpsons movie and an exclusive interview with j.k. rowling (author of the harry potter series) and should level off in the coming months.

the 10.6 million unique visitors noted in the press release is not far off from the comscore data that michael arrington referred to, which showed about 10 million unique visitors. the problem is that the comscore data shows the 10 million as being a 29% decrease from the june figure of 14 million, while the press release mentions that the 10 million is a 24% increase from june figures.

now i don’t want to go around pointing fingers but i have generally found comscore and compete data to be fairly reliable.