New All About Vision content offers comprehensive tips about reading eyeglass prescriptions and buying low vision magnifiers.

An optometrist explains how eye doctors determine eyeglass prescriptions for myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism.

In the low vision section, a new guide to buying low vision magnifiers includes expert advice about which devices are needed for different kinds of vision loss such as peripheral vision problems.

Just nine weeks after reaching a record 200,000 unique visitors in one week, All About Vision has served 241,631 weekly visitors, during the week ending January 16.

For the first half of January, compared with the same period last year, unique visitors are up 31%.

The site’s ten busiest pages seem to indicate an upswing in interest in areas that were somewhat out of favor in 2009.  Page views of the site’s LASIK & Vision Surgery section main page are up 52%, while the article on refractive surgery cost is up 53%.  Color contact lens sales were down in 2009, but page views of that article are up 21%.

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Ceatus Media Group has acquired the web-based assets of My Choice Medical Holdings from Vertrue, Inc. The assets consist of 23 websites — including breastimplants4you.com, newimage.com and facialplasticsurgery.net — that offer extensive information about plastic surgery and other cosmetic enhancement procedures.

The acquisition leverages the company’s leading position in online plastic surgery education as publisher of  Consumer Guide to Plastic Surgery.

Most of the content in the acquired websites focuses on popular subjects such as breast implants, facial plastic surgery, facelift and rhinoplasty. Ceatus plans to refresh and re-launch the sites, beginning with breastimplants4you.com to coincide with the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery meeting in April 2010.

For further details, see the complete news release.

Organic (non-paid) growth of unique visitors to All About Vision was a record 43% in December 2009, compared with December of the previous year. Despite the usual fall-off of traffic for the holiday season, December was the site’s fourth best month of 2009.

For all of 2009, growth of non-paid unique visitors was 29%.

All About Vision served 9.5 million unique visitors last year, measured weekly by Google Analytics, for a 22% visitor growth rate over the previous year.

Almost 22 million web pages were viewed, and visitors spent an average of 2:20 (minutes:seconds) on the site.

Google accounted for 69% of all visitors, although there were more than 23,000 referring websites during the course of the year.

All About Vision is now ten years old.  The site launched January 2, 2000.

The GP Lens Institute, the educational arm of the Contact Lens Manufacturers Association, has launched a new GP Contact Lenses website developed by Access Media.

The site educates consumers about the many benefits of GP contact lenses, and contacts in general.

The new site replaces GPLI’s first-generation consumer website, which was produced by Access Media in 1999. The updated site includes new articles on several topics:

• astigmatism
• keratoconus
• orthokeratology
• presbyopia
• irregular vision problems
• contact lens prescriptions
• contact lens cost

Popular articles from the earlier site are still there, covering topics such as bifocal contacts and the history of contact lenses, with updated information.

In addition, the site now includes video testimonials produced by Wink Productions. Featured GP wearers include consumers who use GPs for keratoconus, ortho-k and presbyopia.

The site can be found at www.ContactLenses.org.

For the first time in the site’s almost-ten-year history, All About Vision served more than 200,000 unique visitors in one week, according to Google Analytics.

For the week ending November 14, the site served 200,516 unique visitors.  But that traffic record didn’t last long: The following week, Google Analytics documented 206,838 unique visitors.

What’s driving the increase? Comparing the two-week period to a similar period last month, traffic increases can be seen for just about all the site’s most-viewed articles. Standouts include topics like eye twitching (up 123%), pink eye (up 26%), LASIK cost (up 14%) and astigmatism (up 14%). The lone exception among high-traffic articles was that about color contact lenses; it dropped following a record-setting October.

All About Vision readers submit many questions about eye allergy symptoms, which editorial board member Brian Chou, OD, answers in this new feature.

Eye allergies have many causes, including dust and pollen exposure that can lead to allergic conjunctivitis.

Treatments include over-the-counter or prescription eye drops.

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.