Four new All About Vision articles offer tips to contact lens wearers interested in materials, brands, special effects and other features.

With Halloween looming, theatrical contacts worn by Twilight movie series actors help create vampires with amber eyes.

New articles also provide insights about contact lens materials and how to select the right contacts.

An article about choosing contact lens brands helps readers understand different aspects of contacts.

All About Vision’s new Dry Eyes and LASIK article discusses what can be done to improve outcomes following vision correction surgery.

Dry eyes are so common that many LASIK candidates must be treated in advance of a procedure.

Also, a LASIK procedure sometimes can reduce sensitivity in the clear front of the eye (cornea) to cause dry eyes that usually are temporary.

Recommended remedies for dry eyes can include flaxseed oil and over-the-counter or prescription eye drops.

Looking at the past 60 days compared to a year earlier, visitors are using certain keywords more frequently to find our site:

• Pink eye, up 251%
• LASIK eye surgery cost, up 425%
• Polarized lenses, up 289%
• Floaters in the eye, up 237%
• Eye drops, up 304%

Views of a number of popular pages have also increased dramatically:

• LASIK & Vision Surgery Home Page, up 74%
• LASIK Cost, up 80%
• Blepharitis, up 180%
• Cataract surgery, up 54%
• Eye Vitamins & Nutrition Home Page, up 62%

During this period, the site generated more than 2.8 million unique page views.

Unique, non-paid visitors to All About Vision are up 26% for the first eight months of the year, compared to the same period in 2008.  The non-paid visitor count exludes traffic from search engine advertising and contextual ad programs administered by Google and Yahoo.

About 94% of the site’s traffic is non-paid, and comes from organic search engine results and links from eye doctors, optical retailers, media, corporations, governments, educational institutions and other entities.  During July and August, more than 8,000 websites sent visitors to All About Vision.

All About Vision is on track to serve more than 9,000,000 unique visitors in 2009, measured weekly by Google Analytics.

A new All About Vision article explains how the drug, Latisse, works to lengthen and thicken eyelashes for a cosmetic effect.

The drug used in Latisse ordinarily is a glaucoma treatment, which eye doctors learned produced the side effect of extra eyelash growth.

Other recently added content includes an overview of different types of eye infections, including common causes of pink eye.

A new article on color blind tests describes screenings that determine if patients have a color deficiency.

Ocular rosacea is another new topic that contains detailed explanations of causes and symptoms such as dry eyes.

Reader response to All About Vision’s popular ocular migraines article led to a new ocular migraine Q&A, featuring discussion by editorial board member Charles Slonim, MD.

Optometry Giving Sight and All About Vision have joined forces to promote consumer education about eye health and vision correction options, while raising money to alleviate functional blindness and fund sustainable eye care programs in developing nations.  Optometry Giving Sight is a global organization dedicated to the prevention of blindness and impaired vision due to uncorrected refractive error.

As part of its outreach to eye care practices, Optometry Giving Sight is creating awareness of the opportunity for practices to link their websites to All About Vision, thereby referring patients to 500 pages of comprehensive, doctor-reviewed educational information covering all eye care topics.

Each time a practice or optical store links its website’s home page to All About Vision using a prescribed set of links or All About Vision’s site visitor counter, a $50 donation is made to Optometry Giving Sight.  The promotion began earlier this summer and runs through August 31.

A 2009 LASIK cost report commissioned by All About Vision from a leading industry analyst shows that procedure prices have remained about the same during the past several years.

The report is based on results of a survey of refractive surgeons conducted in the first quarter of 2009.

During the past year, more LASIK surgeons opted to quote a single price for a procedure rather than charging extra for technology such as wavefront-guided or bladeless LASIK.

Average prices charged to LASIK patients are about $2,140 per eye for all laser-based procedures, and $2,314 for custom LASIK.

All About Vision served 4.7 million unique visitors during the first half of 2009, measured weekly by Google Analytics, a 20% increase from the same period in 2008.

During that time, non-paid visitors increased 27% on a comparable basis.

Articles on topics such as blepharitis, glaucoma surgery, macular holes and acanthamoeba keratitis experienced triple-digit percentage increases in page views.

Two new articles generated more than 50,000 page views each: “Common Eye Disorders” by Dr. Burt Dubow,  and “Cataract Surgery Complications” by Dr. Chris Knobbe.

While not yet FDA approved, PresbyLASIK could become a viable option for correcting focusing problems related to presbyopia.

This investigational LASIK procedure creates multifocal zones on the eye’s surface or cornea, similar to the way multifocal intraocular lenses restore sight at multiple distances following cataract surgery.

All About Vision continues to monitor early, favorable study results, which eventually could lead to FDA approval of this novel approach to correcting presbyopia problems.

All About Vision’s popular “Ask the Dry Eye Doctor” feature addresses many topics, including causes of dry eyes and conditions such as Sjogren’s syndrome.

William Trattler, MD, answers selected reader questions by discussing remedies that include using over-the-counter or prescription eye drops or taking flaxseed oil orally.

Past answers from previous eye doctor Q&As are found in articles including “Ask the LASIK Surgeon” and “Ask the Cataract Surgeon.”