Aussies pledged allegiance to AFL during the past five weeks and surfed soccer sites as the finals were played -- snubbing Olympics sites dedicated to covering the Sydney 2000 Summer Games.
During August, Olympic sites were the second most popular type of sporting site, attracting 20.02 percent of sporting traffic -- compared to 8.1 percent in July. Online AFL footy pages pulled in a bigger crowd and captured 22.5 percent of sport-related traffic.
"We anticipate this month the situation will be different," a spokesperson from Web site performance tracking service Hitwise, told ZDNet Australia. "The Olympics are upon us and the AFL is finished," she added.
While there are a number of footy sites available, olympics.com -- the top Olympics Web site that captured 84.92 percent of all traffic to Olympics sites throughout August -- occupied the top spot in both the Hitwise Australian sports category and global sports category. Individually, olympics.com is more popular than any AFL site.
The site was ranked seventh in the overall Hitwise charts for Australian Web sites during August -- up from twenty-second place during July. On September 6, Hitwise confirmed olympics.com was ranked third most popular Australian site.
