Donovan World Cup Goal Sees Near-Record Internet Spike

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: Tech Talk

United States' Landon Donovan, foreground left

(Credit: Elise Amendola)

There was a massive spike in Internet traffic just around the time that the United States and Algeria were finishing their down-to-the-wire World Cup match on Wednesday.

Following the clinching goal by the U.S.'s Landon Donovan around the 91st minute of the second half, the Akamai Net Usage Index registered a traffic spike of 11.2 million visitors per minute. That fell just short of beating the traffic record set earlier this month on the first day of the World Cup - but there are still a couple of weeks' worth of games to go yet and interest in this quadrennial global event is sky high. Indeed, As Mashable first noted, Tweets containing the term "USA" comprised 6 percent of Twitter volume.

Here are the highs registered by Akamai:

June 11, Day 1 of 2010 World Cup: 12,078,868

June 23 2010: 11,294, 863: U.S. versus Algeria

Nov. 4, 2008: 8,572,042: Barack Obama elected president

June 22, 2006: 7,283,584: Ghana eliminates U.S. in World Cup

March 20, 2008: 7,008,325: First day of "March Madness" college basketball tourney

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
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