Jason Kottke asks an interesting question: Why did online traffic at the NewYorkTimes.com Web site hit record-breaking levels last month? While the New York Times has always been a favorite resource for bloggers and other online news junkies, it looks like the newspaper did little or nothing special to boost traffic. Kottke points to the New York Times press release and wonders aloud how "content" alone could have been responsible for the spike in traffic:

"Having some experience building and running content-based web sites, I'm skeptical the specific content offered by the NY Times is the whole story here. (This is a bit like Amazon saying their sales increased mostly because the quality of the books offered went up.)"

For those keeping track, the New York Times had 555 million page views in March, a nifty little 17% increase compared to the year-earlier period.