This is a graphic of hourly traffic to MSNBC.com's Politics front page on Election Day.

Politics.MSNBC.com saw nearly 16 million page views yesterday, this press release notes. "Nearly 70% of total traffic to MSNBC.com's election day politics section arrived between 7:00 pm - midnight ET suggesting the Internet's critical place in news consumers' media mix. Traffic to MSNBC.com remained high throughout the night. At midnight on the West Coast site traffic was five times higher than normal levels."

Here are more traffic stats...

Another sign of growing Web news popularity: ABCNews.com hit a five year high in October with more than 138 million page views, showing a 77 percent increase from Oct. 2005, the network says. ABC cites Brian Ross' reporting on the Mark Foley/congressional page scandal as a key driver of site traffic.

The Investigative Unit's site traffic increased more than five times from the previous monthly average...



> Update: 12:17pm: ABCNews.com's "new high" is "less than a fifth of msnbc.com or yahoonews.com or cnn.com. All they do well is put out press releases," an e-mailer responds...

"MSNBC.com delivered 88 million online video streams in the month of September, the most in the history of the news website," the company said today. "This is the first record-breaking month for online video streams that was not driven by one major news event, signifying the increasing popularity of online video, online news and MSNBC.com."

In September, MSNBC.com recorded 26.7 monthly unique viewers, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. CNN.com came in second with 24.6 million, followed by ABCNews.com with 10.6 million, CBSNews.com with 8.7 million, and FOXNews.com with 7.9 million...

I fell for it last week, and I wasn't the only one. "Couric generally directs viewers to the Web site CBSNews.com at least twice a broadcast, and that site saw a 57 percent increase in traffic for her first week compared to the week before," this AP story says.

But what does a 57 percent increase in traffic actually mean? Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, when the traffic is relatively low to begin with. CBSNews.com averaged 2.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 3, and 3.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 10. The numbers are definitely up, but the percentages conveniently hide the fact that the traffic averages are tiny compared to MSNBC.com, which averaged 12.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 3, and 12.7 million visitors the week of Sept. 10.

ABCNews.com beat CBS, too, but by a much smaller margin; it averaged 3.7 million viewers the week of Sept. 10. Data courtesy of Nielsen//Net-Ratings...

Following Katrina and Rita, "approximately 72 million Americans used the internet to get news and information about the hurricanes," a new Pew study finds. "Nearly three-quarters of online hurricane news consumers -- or 73% -- turned to the Web sites of major news organizations such as CNN.com or MSNBC.com for news about the hurricanes."

But: "Even though major media outlets were the most popular places to go, other kinds of news sites played important roles in filling out online users’ newsgathering habits. One in seven (14%) went to an international news source for news about a U.S. domestic crisis and nearly one-third sought out hurricane information from non-profit organizations. All told, 54% of internet users who got Hurricane-related news online went to at least one out of five types of sites that aren’t associated with major U.S. news organizations (i.e., international news organizations, alternative news sources, blogs, non-profit organizations, or government Web sites)."

MSNBC.com was #1 in Nielsen//Net Ratings' Current Events and Global News category in September 2005, drawing more than 26 million unique users. Here are some of the highlights, from the press release:

> Users played a total of 75 million videos on the site, making it the second highest video month ever (second only to August 2005). September 2 set a single-day record with 9.5 million videos played.

> MSNBC.com's Rita landfall video on Sept. 23 drew more than 800,000 viewers.

> The Daily Nightly blog generated more than 700,000 page views throughout the month, more than one and a half times more than it received in its previous biggest month, August 2005.

> The Hurricane Blogs, written by teams of MSNBC.com reporters traveling throughout the affected areas, generated more than 6 million page views.

For the fourth time in six months, MSNBC.com is ranked #1 in the Current Events and Global News category of the Nielsen/Net Ratings rankings. The site attracted 26.6 million unique visitors in August 2005, while Yahoo News had 25.8 million uniques and CNN.com drew 23.6 million. 69 million videos were played, including nine million Katrina plays in one day (August 29) "and 24 million total plays in the final three days of the month." Imagine how high the numbers for September will be...