Traffic estimates from Compete.com for Philly.com, NBCPhiladelphia.com and CBS3.com, likely three of the most trafficked websites in Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

July marks the middle of the calendar year, quarterly reports and time to evaluate progress on yearly goals.

At the beginning of 2010, we looked at 10 competitors and their relative web traffic. With six months done, we wanted to make the first attempt at listing the most trafficked websites in Philadelphia, using monthly unique visitors as the metric of choice.

To make the comparison, we’ve used public traffic website Compete, but, by way of disclosure, we’ll always offer that any public web metrics are notoriously controversial. It’s also important to note that there is often a drag in such traffic estimates being pulled, so the surest figures are from the end of May.

So, consider this a comparative start and nothing more.

1. *PHILLY.COM | PHILADELPHIA NEWSPAPERS | 1.9M

The region’s dominant web force has long been Philly.com with 1.9 million monthly unique visitors. See the stats here.

2. NBCPHILADELPHIA.COM | NBC 10 | 712k

Last year, the NBC affiliate competed with Philly.com, now they’re closest with 712k monthly unique visitors. See the stats here.

3. Phillies.MLB.com | PHILLIES | 702k

Interestingly, the website of the Pittsburgh Pirates gets more traffic. See the stats here.

4. CBS3.COM | CBS 3 | 500k

See the stats here.

5. Flyers.NHL.com| Flyers | 415k

Traffic for both the Flyers and their Stanley Cup competitors, the Blackhawks, both saw dramatic increases. See the stats here.

6. PhiladelphiaEagles.com | Eagles | 287k

It’s offseason, so it’s tough to pin the Eagles down at 287k, but it’s the game we play. Give them an annual average of more than 400k monthly.

7. SEPTA.org | SEPTA | 280k

SEPTA’s traffic has ranged as high as 380k, but settles on average somewhere above 300k, slowing down in the summer despite that redesign. See the stats here.

8. MyFoxPhilly.com | FOX 29| 245k

Fox just may be the least trafficked TV website in the region**. See the stats here.

9. Phila.gov| City of Philadelphia | 219k

The city’s website, which includes subdomains for the library and PGW, is at a year-long traffic low, but remains among the region’s most visited — despite that logo fiasco. See the stats here.

10. CSNPhilly.com| Comcast Sports Net | 131k

Comcast Sports Net has made a dramatic charge up the traffic data, perhaps with the help of purchasing the 700 Level and Beerleaguer recently. See the stats here.

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The remaining Philadelphia websites regularly exceeding the 100k unique visitors mark are VisitPhilly.com (122k), PECO.com (116k), Citypaper.net (107k) and WHYY.org (102k).

*Comcast.net and Comcast.com are far and away the most trafficked websites maintained in Philadelphia but because the overwhelming majority of their traffic isn’t from the region, they were not included.

**6ABC is part of the ABC Local portion of the Go Network and, as such, its individual traffic cannot be publicly verified using Compete.com.

This is a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming. See others here.

“Philly.com takes seriously the online security of our users, and we go to great efforts to combat issues including malware,” according to a written statement issued to Technically Philly.

“We will continue to investigate all claims regarding Philly.com and stand by our pledge to provide our users with a safe and secure online experience.”

Earlier today, city blog Phillyist reported that one of its readers was issued a warning by an employer to stay off Philly.com because the site could contain malware.

Only one mention of the malware allegations appeared in a Twitter search, but it was posted before the Phillyist’s story and was not the blog’s original source. “Whatever you do, don’t go to Philly.com, it’s infected with Malware,” tweeted:

Philly.com Vice President and Editor Wendy Warren told Technically Philly she didn’t know what company was referenced in the Phillyist tip and that no users have contacted Philly.com directly about problems with the site.

The Wall Street Journal reported this month about the growing trend of online advertisements harboring malware, boosted by publishers trying a variety of Web ad solutions with a growing collection of middlemen.

Malware scares have affected a number of high profile Web sites in recent months, including AmericanIdol.com, FoxNews.com, and Major League Baseball’s MLB.com, according to Econsultancy, an industry news site for digital marketers. Solutions are said to be easy, but ad networks that increasingly involve redistribution are seen to pose potential weakness.

Warren said that the site works closely with a select number of advertising networks that screen both ads and publishers to ensure that malware doesn’t affect users.

“We checked with the ad network that we used today, and they have not had any reports of malware on Philly.com,” she said. “I’m certainly not going to say that it’s impossible or that it didn’t happen, but we have not been able to find any evidence of it today.”

Staff reporter Christopher Wink contributed to this story.

Read about what's going on here after the jump.

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Philadelphians are the highest taxed people in the United States. So says eminent Philadelphia Daily News legacy columnist John Baer.

That’s enough to crack any red-blooded American’s Liberty Bell.

In a column, Baer was railing against Mayor Nutter’s calls to Harrisburg for legislative authority to hike the city’s sales tax from seven to eight percent. The story actually has a good dialogue in the comments section, too — a rarity for Philly.com.

The topic came up elsewhere this week.

Joe Distefano, the Inquirer’s top bearded business columnist, wrote an absolute must read on Nutter’s stalling of and his administration’s subsequent rethinking of continuing the move to “eradicating”the city’s two-pronged business privilege tax.

By no account should you think this is strictly a Philly problem these days.

Fast Eddie Rendell said this past week that if he was forced to push for a hike in the state’s income tax, he would vie for it to return to its normal state three years later, according to reporting from foxy Inquirer state capital correspondent Angela “It’s Greek” Couloumbis.

After the jump, why ET is with a Philly cop above, why 600 people paid $500 to be in Delaware and more than five other itches you need scratched, including our best read story of the week.

In order of importance for your ease.

• Our friends at Keystone Edge report on the honoree distinction two Pennsylvania tourism sites won at last week’s Webby Awards. Don’t forget bluecadet, which one a people’s award.
• Philly Tech News reports that three regional firms were named to CIO.com’s recent CIO 100, which honors companies that are creating business through technology innovation. Not one of the three are based within Philly’s 135 square miles. PTN keeps the good times rolling by reporting that the Milken Institute, which recently called Philadelphia the second best life sciences region in the country, ranked the Illadelph 11th in its High Tech Rankings, though there’s some question to that meaning.
• The Inquirer had a front page story on First Tuesday in November, a small Galloway, N.J.-based voter-tracking company that offers real-time Election Day updates. Dude in their photo is wearing a Yankees hat, though.
• You may have heard a collective yelp of excitement from their readers when Geekadelphia reported that Kevin Werbach, an assistant professor over at the University of Pennsylvania, will be giving a talk entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in World of Warcraft at tomorrow’s Philly Pecha Kucha event Geekadelphia also reports this week on a young woman who, well, they interview a young woman who goes around Philadelphia and takes photos of herself wearing an ET mask. That’s her standing with some confident Philadelphia police officer in the above photo. And, really, these are the stories that would be lost if newspapers went bankrupt and we didn’t have the Geekadelphia crew.
• Inqy columnist Distefano also reports that 600 hundred guests are said to have paid nearly $500 to attend Early Stage East 2009, a venture capital conference this week. It happened in Wilmington, Del. where happiness is made. [Full Disclosure: Sean Blanda loves Delaware.] That ain’t the only exclusive tech event afoot. The Business Journal reports that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will be the keynote speaker at the “client summit” to be held in King of Prussia later this month by e-commerce and interactive marketing services provider GSI Commerce.
• Contentinople reports on Philly.com’s move to use Brightcove to manage its video produced for the site. The move could come with an increase in video content, which reportedly could be a move toward the site’s still publicly undetailed plan for an online content model, which — though Contentinople didn’t make note — we first reported.

• Our Most Trafficked Story of the Week: Shop Talk: Obama Girl’s Leah Kauffman on Phrequency.com redesign

Every Friday morning we make sure you didn’t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

Updated: 5:33 p.m. 6/10/09 with additional attribution

This is part of an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign.

On a Friday afternoon in early May, Leah Kauffman dons a t-shirt to show off her gang affiliation.

A pair of hands screenprinted on the bright red tee are positioned similarly to the Bloods street gang hand signal. Fingers on the right hand are contorted into the shape of the letters ‘b,’ ‘l’ and ‘o.’ The left hand is flipped upside-down, and the index finger curled, creating a hanging “g.”

‘Blog,’ it reads.

At first glance, it’s easy to miss. But it makes sense. Kauffman runs Philly.com’s Phrequency, a news portal that covers the movers, shakers and rattlers of Philly’s music community.

In April, Phrequency was redesigned with a more streamlined, blog-esque interface; dropping the clunky, genre focus that forced users to choose hip-hop or punk, R&B or jazz, for a content-oriented design that doesn’t split hairs on artists who span all of those.

It was a move that Kauffman had wanted to make for months.

Phrequency.com dropped genres to streamline the process and better associate with new acts that are hard to classify.

“The reality is that people are not searching for music by genre. People are not classifying themselves [and they're saying] ‘I’m not just hip hop or punk.’ From a management standpoint, it’s insanely difficult to program eight pages of genres,” she says, seated in a conference room on the 35th floor of Five Penn Center in Center city.

Since launching in November, Phrequency has been quietly drumming up an audience of music aficionados and bringing together a community that didn’t have a local online portal before the site came along, she says.

“We have one of the biggest talent pools in America, some of the best studio musicians. We’re totally underserved by local media. There was a real void to fill.”

Kauffman, a Temple University graduate, made headlines last year with her viral video project “Obama Girl,” a set of tongue-in-cheek videos made in support of Barack Obama’s 2009 presidential campaign. Her song “Crush On Obama,” for which Kauffman sang vocal tracks behind on-screen performer Amber Lee Ettinger, has racked up 14.2 million YouTube hits.

Having gained a few new contacts, Kauffman pitched the idea of Phrequency last year to former Philly.com President Eric Grilly, who left the company in May to head digital operations at Comcast Sports Group, as the Philadelphia Business Journal reported and we mentioned in an earlier Comcast Roundup.

“[I knew] that a newspaper would be a perfect organization to start something like this and that Phrequency could help Philly.com reach a younger audience,” she says.

Along with a web development team, she began storyboarding the site design, looking to magazines like Nylon for inspiration. After it launched and as the site developed, Kauffman began to realize that the original plans needed adjustment. Seven months later, it was goodbye genres, hello blog.

Kauffman says that the site has been improved with better embedable widgets and updated from Yahoo’s Maven video platform to the industry-standard Brightcove video player. Videos are a popular part of the site, she says, and photos are more strongly integrated with the new format.

The whole editorial process is streamlined. Instead of having to feed an entire photo gallery with pictures, copy and captions, an author can drop a picture that speaks for itself directly into a blog post; that was something the old content management system didn’t allow.

Kauffman says that the blog format provides a less intimidating, linear accessibility to readers. “There is something about a blog post that is friendly, gives you a little more personality,” she says. “People our age look at blog posts and understand it’s casual,” she says.

It’s even helped get content out there faster.

In late April, speedy posting helped the site break a story about alleged police brutality that Philadelphia pop-punk band Valencia documented after a show at the Theater of Living Arts on South Street, as we reported.

See the video from after the show below.

Since launch, Kauffman says that there’s been a “big change” in the way people are interacting with the site. They’re commenting more and linking more often.

Of course, it might be Kauffman’s connection with other online media outlets in the music community that could be driving some of those links.

Phrequency has been reaching out to local blogs like Mikey McFly, Vanache and Late Night Wall Flower to foster the community and expand its audience reach. In April, it partnered with local arts and culture magazine McJawn to host a show at Northern Liberties-based Silk City.

“There’s a new generation of young, positive bloggers in the city that say ‘if we stick together, we can make Philadelphia better,” she says. “Everyone’s trying to make it and trying to create art that’s meaningful to them and to an audience. That’s something we can all share.”

When major Philadelphia Web sites change, Technically Philly will find out why in The Redesign. Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup,

The ability to bookmark your Comcast.net e-mail account page has changed, gripes a reader, who tipped us to the problem, and it’s all for advertising.

(Send us your Philly tech and innovation tips, insight or story ideas!)

That reader says no longer can you bookmark your e-mail account page and browse directly there. Now bookmarks, old or new, send you to the Comcast.net homepage, forcing extra clicks to their “monetized articles & ads,” the reader says.

Sounds like conspiracy theory, a Comcast spokesman told Technically Philly.

Older bookmarks may need to be updated once more because of the final completion of a new Comcast.net e-mail iteration that began rollout last year, says Charlie Douglas, the director of communications for Comcast’s corporate online products.

“I don’t think it’s any different than Yahoo or almost any other e-mail service,” Douglas says. It should be noted that some, like Gmail, can have direct bookmarks.

Douglas was unaware of any push for increased click-rates on the Comcast.net homepage by e-mail users, which likely would be negligible for canceling those using bookmarks anyway.

A Philly.com executive jumps ship, Comcast ain’t the worst company in the country and four other Comcast stories you should read, after the jump.

Organized by importance for your ease:

• Editor & Publisher reports that former Philly.com President Eric Grilly has been named executive vice president and chief digital officer for Comcast Sports Group. Because when you think Web innovation, you think newspapers.
• Consumerist.org dubs AIG the Worst Company in America, beating out Comcast in the annual reader-voted contest, which we reported on last week. Someone in the comments inexplicably suggests Comcast should get a “bottle of urine” for a runner-up prize.
• PC World reports on a U.S. Senate push for new net neutrality laws, amid Comcast’s battle with the FCC, which we mentioned last week.
• A Huffington Post blogger calls interest from cable comapnies to charge heavy Internet users as “the end of the Internet.” The Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez has reported on Comcast’s take on “excessive use.”
• The Salem News reports on Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis and his roots in Peabody, Mass. The lone comment on the story in Angelakis’s hometown paper basically calls him a fat cat for making $11.2 million last year.
• The Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez reports that Comcast was investigating what made an undisclosed number of users lose phone service for 90 minutes on Tuesday. Yeah, we didn’t hear anything more about it, either. …Checking…

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.