Donovan World Cup Goal Sees Near-Record Internet Spike

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