The New York Times will shut down the Web site of its sister paper, the International Herald Tribune, and host that content on NYTimes.com, the newspaper announced to staff in an e-mail on Tuesday, Forbes reported.

The New York Times is hoping to become more global and increase traffic on NYTimes.com, and will also look to “reassign or relocate people” at the IHT, the e-mail stated.

The move is all about growing the NYTimes.com brand globally, and is "absolutely, positively not about cost savings," said Vivian Schiller, NYTimes.com general manager, according to Forbes.

Combining the Web sites is aimed to increase traffic and boost the amount of content on NYTimes.com, all while selling more ads targeting the 18 percent to 20 percent of visitors coming to the site from outside the United States, Forbes reported.

"Despite a spirited revamping earlier this decade that gave it a niche among expatriate Americans, Paris-based IHT.com never really got the focus of management in New York or the funding to truly experiment with differentiating itself from the flagship sister site," the Forbes article stated. "As a result, it remained dwarfed and smothered by its larger sibling."

According to comScore data, 19.4 million unique users visited NYTimes.com in August, while 2.5 million uniques visited IHT.com, according to Forbes.