Visit Editor & Publisher for the full list of the top 30 news sites and online newspaper sites.

CNN Digital Network was the top online Current Events & Global News destination when ranked by unique audience on Inauguration Day, with 11.0 million unique visitors. MSNBC Digital Network and Yahoo! News took the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, with 10.0 and 9.1 million unique visitors, respectively.

Most Linked-To-Videos on Inauguration Day

Among the top 15 most linked-to-videos globally on Inauguration Day, 11 of them related to President Obama’s inauguration and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

MSNBC Digital Network topped the list of news sites with nearly 41M unique visitors, a 37% jump from the prior year.

The news/opinion site the Huffington Post placed 18th on the list, but showed the greatest traffic gain. It’s 8.1M unique readers for October 2008 was a 448% improvement over the prior year.

CNN, Yahoo!, AOL, and the New York Times rounded out the top five in overall traffic.

More at Editor & Publisher.

Top 30 News Sites For October 2008

Chief among these thrifty advertising alternatives – the auto-themed Speed Channel, which Republicans are 52% more likely to watch, compared with the average American.

In comparison, Republican voters are 48% more likely to watch FOX News and 33% more likely to watch Country Music Television. 

The takeaway: well-placed cable advertising can reach core Republican constituents at a more favorable CPM.

Nielsen’s report is based on a survey of 40,000 registered U.S. voters, conducted online on September 30. 

The report’s findings track the TV viewing habits of Republican, Democratic, and Independent voters, pinpointing which TV networks reach the largest percentages of voters of each political affiliation.

View Nielsen PreView’s report.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in The Independent and The Hollywood Reporter.

During the 2pm to 3pm (EST) daypart on Monday, the combined audiences for CNN, CNBC, FOX News, and MSNBC jumped by 71% over the average daily audience for that daypart between Sept. 1 and Sept. 28, according to Nielsen.  The 3pm to 4pm daypart saw an even larger jump (103%) over the average audience for the prior portion of September. 

CNN, CNBC, FOX NEWS, and MSNBC’s combined audience spiked at almost 7.1 million viewers during the 5pm to 6pm hour — an 84% increase over that daypart’s average daily audience for Sept. 1 through Sept. 28.

Also surging on Monday: blog discussions with the terms “wall street” and “bailout.”  Overall, nearly 2% of all blog posts on Sept. 29 mentioned the term “bailout.”

Meanwhile, traffic to online brokerage websites was up by 30% between September 15 and 21 — the week that AIG and Lehman Brothers collapsed, according to Nielsen data released Tuesday.

Unique visitors to online trading sites increased from a weekly average of 9.2 million during the previous seven weeks (July 28 – September 14) to nearly 12 million during the week ending September 21. 

ShareBuilder.com, Scottrade.com, and Merrill Lynch’s corporate website traffic also jumped between September 15 and 21 — by 217%, 104%, and 128%, respectively.

The total number of people accessing the Internet remained stable during that time period.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in The Baltimore Sun.