Akamai Mapping Major News Web Traffic

Akamai unveils its Net Usage Index which tracks and maps global online attention to news stories. But what does it tell us?

Akamai Technologies has unveiled its Akamai Net Usage Index, a near real-time Web activity report which tracks the total visitors per minute to more than 100 new portal sites around the world. The resulting map shows geographical and time-based trends on where specific news stories are being "consumed."

Akamai operates as a high-speed content delivery service for a wide variety of Internet sites worldwide (including CNN, NBC, Reuters, LeMonde, XM Satellite Radio, and many others), putting it in a nearly unique position to monitor aggregate activity across a wide range of online media outlets. In its statement, Akamai says it is not collecting information on individual Internet users nor revealing traffic levels for any specific Internet sites or news sources. Rather, the Net Usage Index describes what news events triggered the most (or, presumably, least) interest from Internet users over time, and where those Internet users are located in the world. Akamai updates the Net Usage Index every five minutes, and says the system will track particular stories over long periods of time.

What does the Akamai Net Usage Index reveal? The service is so new—and the public data aggregated at such a high level—that, at first glance, the global news usage map seems to correspond to periods of day and night. The service may be more useful for advertisers and market analysts comparing Internet-based interest in high-profile stories; for instance, Akamai’s data shows substantially more Internet users sought out information on the July 7, 2005 terror bombings in London than the recent verdict in pop-star Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial.