Mid-term elections top Obama's 2008 election win in Internet traffic

Oh, how fickle fame and history. Just two years ago, President Obama's election made Internet history, spiking traffic as high as 4.29 million page views a minute.

Alas, 2010 has been a cruel year for the president, who's fallen to No. 5 on the all-time list.

This week's mid-term elections were the latest to top President Obama's numbers, ringing up some 5.66 million PVs a minute, moving it into the No. 3 position all-time.

No. 1? Easy. It was the 10.4 million PVs per minute recorded June 24 when the longest-ever Wimbledon tennis match and World Cup qualifying soccer matches overlapped.

Content delivery network Akamai, which uses its Net Usage Index to measure traffic to major news websites, said that although the numbers were higher, it's likely due to the fact that more people are using the Internet to consume news today than way back in 2008.

"There's two things happening," said Akamai spokeswoman Liz Bradley. "There's more people going to the Web, and the websites they're going to -- the news sites -- are offering more, which makes them more appealing to consume news on."
The Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives Tuesday, a big enough story to drive interest from overseas, as well. Some 42 percent of people visiting news sites at 6 p.m. Tuesday were located outside North America.

For more:
- see this CNN report