Tragedy in US pulls readers to nzherald.co.nz

Yesterday's tragic terrorist attacks in the United States have caused a huge surge in traffic to the Herald's website.

Mark Ottaway, general manager of nzherald.co.nz, said total page impressions yesterday were two and a half times higher than the previous day.

The website's World News section carried almost ten times as much traffic as the previous day.

Concern about the attacks' effects on the global economy was reflected in a jump in traffic to the Business section too.

"Business traffic moves in a weekly cycle," Mr Ottaway said. "Compared to the prior Wednesday 5th, Business was up 67 per cent, and use of personal portfolios was almost double - confirming our suspicion that a lot of people were monitoring world and personal economic impact."

Mr Ottaway said the increase in online reading of the Herald was "phenomenal".

"We thought yesterday was big and that it would be a peak. This morning has eclipsed yesterday again. Our per second data peaks were up to 50 per cent higher this morning than they were at their highest yesterday."

He says the nzherald.co.nz web servers have had no trouble handling the extra demand.