The outcome of the US presidential elections may still be hanging by a thread but Australian Internet users have got the winner all sewn up, with local traffic to Al Gore's Web site hitting an all-time high last week.
Although the US election deadlock has attracted plenty of interest from Australian Internet users, with both Al Gore and George Bush's Web sites surging in the rankings, the site of Democrats candidate Gore has won a larger show of Australian support, according to Internet monitoring service hitwise.com.au
Having attracted 19.8 percent of all traffic to the Hitwise Politics category, www.algore.com favours comparably with the site of Republican rival George Bush which is currently in third place behind the official site of the Australian Labour Party - www.alp.org.au.
www.georgebush.com received 9.8 percent of politics-related traffic at the end of the US election week.
In the midst of the Florida recount, US news sites have also proved to be popular source of around-the-clock information on the US presidential election.
The Hitwise News and Media category attracted a 32 percent increase in traffic last week, compared to its October average.
Australians bolstered the CNN Interactive site, www.cnn.com, to become the third most popular site in the Hitwise News and Media category on US election day. This was a 10-place leap from the previous week when the CNN site ranked thirteenth.
"These results clearly show Australians have a very keen interest in the progress of the US presidential election," Hitwise CEO Andrew Walsh said. "Australians are able to gain an American perspective on the election result and obtain information on this closely fought contest, around the clock," he added.
Other movers and groovers in the Hitwise News and Media category include The Washington Post site which climbed to 24th place up from 75th. The New York Times Web site progressed to 26th place from 41st, USA Today now stands in 43rd place compared to the previous week's 71st place and the LA Times is currently ranked 79th after being in 213th place last week.
Last week's election day was the biggest day in Web history for US news and information sites with traffic to some such sites increasing by as much as 300 percent during the day itself, according to Internet measurement service Nielsen/NetRatings.
"For many, the US election is proof the Web is a viable medium for covering such events and that it even has advantages over static print media, which face hard and fast deadlines," VP of Nielsen/NetRatings, Allen Weiner said.
