CLIFFHANGER ELECTION FUELS WEB TRAFFIC

By: Staff Reports News Sites Report New Records





During the 1996 elections, some pundits wondered if the Internet was really a viable source for election coverage. It's now safe to say the Internet is performing.



Overall, news Web sites did a fair job of keeping up with the state-by-state projections, although television in most cases made predictions before Web sites. For example, projections on ABC, CBS and NBC were usually made several minutes before their respective Web sites were updated.



Nielsen/Netratings reported that daily traffic for top news and
information sites on the Web soared across the board on Tuesday,
with Yahoo!'s political news area jumping 357% for at-home users
between Monday and Tuesday. CNN.com was the top news site overall
with almost 1.6 million visitors at home and 2.4 million unique visitors
logging on at work, according to the measurement service.



"I think this is a huge win tonight for the Internet," said
Merrill Brown, editor in chief for MSNBC.com, which saw high
traffic figures very early in the day, even before noon on the
East Coast. MSNBC.com said it had 5 million unique users by the
end of the day.



ABC News reported almost 13 million page views by 4 p.m., a new
record, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Nielsen/Netratings reported that the political section of
ABCNews.com spiked 366% between Nov. 6 and Nov. 7. Meanwhile,
CNN.com said it was getting 10 million page views every hour.



For the 24-hour period ending midnight Tuesday, USAToday.com saw a 44% increase over its previous all-time high, which was set on Sept. 11 during the Olympics. "We appear to be on track to beat that September traffic record again today, having been at consistently high traffic levels every hour since 8 a.m. this morning," said Kinsey Wilson, vice president and editor-in-chief.



In the pivotal state of Florida, the St. Petersburg Times
said Tuesday's Web traffic was 24% higher than its previous
single-day record. The Web staff worked through the night to
update local election figures every 10 minutes. And an artist was
on hand to update a special electoral map on the site's
home page.



Michigan Live, the Web site of eight dailies, got an early start by setting a traffic record on Monday with over 1 million page views, "thanks to pre-election hoopla and the surprise resignation of the Detroit Lions football coach," said John Bebow, editor in chief. The site was hoping for even bigger numbers today with too-close-to-call House races and a Senate race.



Not all of these users were able to immediately get into the sites. At 8 p.m., some reporters logging on to MSNBC.com got this message: "Breaking News Alert: You're seeing this page because MSNBC is experiencing high site traffic."



MSNBC.com Executive Editor Michael Silberman said the site experienced traffic surges right after the polls closed at different times across the country. As the surges slowed the site down at times, editors temporarily pulled some data intensive features such as sports scores and weather in order to speed things up.



Preliminary traffic figures showed users quickly siphoning off the national page into personalized news based on ZIP code. Sources for local election coverage included the Voter News Service, NBC-affiliated TV stations, and a series of newspaper groups. MSNBC.com handed traffic off to other sites through links on its' state pages.



Sites were expecting high traffic on Wednesday as the election remained contested. "The beautiful thing about this Internet is that it's 24/7," Brown said.



But the Internet couldn't compete with the homespun commentary from the likes of Dan Rather. No Web site told us that Bush was tearing through "the South like a tornado through a trailer park," as Rather said at one point Tuesday evening.







Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher.