Boom in the NorthWest

Not far from MrWeb's US office, you can currently see Mt St Helen's erupting. For those without the option of watching live, the US Geological Survey and Dept. of Agriculture web sites offer an easy way to keep watch on the volcano, and traffic to both has soared according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

At-home traffic to the Geological Survey site rose 187% during the week ending October 3 as the peak erupted for the first time in 18 years on October 1.The majority of its 935,000 visitors (58%) logged on to obtain updates on the volcano's activity.

Similarly, the Dept. of Agriculture site's audience rose 185% to 1.2m, of whom 85% viewed the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam.

Ejections of another kind accounted for one of the week's other big gainers. Visitors to the NBC Universal site were up 26% as TV reality show The Apprentice 2 fired its fourth candidate on Thursday, September 29. The site attracted 914,000 unique office workers, with 34% of the traffic visiting The Apprentice 2 pages.

Nielsen//NetRatings is online at www.nielsen-netratings.com . The USGS is at www.usgs.gov/ with Mt St Helen's images.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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