Internet News Traffic Spikes As Casey Anthony Verdict Announced

The verdict in the State of Florida vs. Casey Anthony murder trial coincided with a spike in online news traffic.

Content delivery network Akamai tells us that it saw a spike in its Net Usage Index for News around the time of the verdict. As the verdict was announced, news site pageviews jumped from about 2 million to nearly 3.3 million a minute — nearly all of that coming from the U.S.

CNN saw an online traffic spike as well. The network tells us that more than 1 million users were watching CNN.com/live between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. This was 30 times higher than the prior four-week average.

CNN.com (which syndicates Mashable content) also experienced a surge in regular web traffic, with 12 million pageviews — four times the four-week average — on the site during the hour the verdict was announced.

Twenty-five-year-old Anthony was found not guilty of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter. Anthony’s trial lasted nearly six weeks, but the case itself has been a big part of cable news for the past three years.

The Anthony trial was streamed online as much as broadcast on cable TV. This allowed individuals to tune in from work and to comment using social media in real time.

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