Web traffic to sites within the “Current Events and Global News” category was up 27% on Election Day, versus the previous Tuesday (Oct. 28), Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.

The candidates’ websites also drew healthy traffic on Election Day.  Obama’s site had 1.2 million unique visitors on Nov. 4, while McCain’s site had 479,000 unique visitors.

Page views and time-per-person at current events and news websites also increased 103% and 61%, respectively, on Tuesday, according to Nielsen.

Check out historical unique audience data from Election Day 2004.

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Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age, Silicon Alley Insider, Mediaweek, Media Life magazine, and Direct News.

The NY Times’ website drew just over 20 million unique visitors in September — a 37% increase over unique traffic to the site last September.

Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 44% year over year growth, reaching 43.2 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen.

Surging interest in the U.S. presidential campaign likely drove growth for several U.S. news sites in September. 

The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska cracked Nielsen’s top 30 newspaper websites ranking for the first time, following a 928% jump in unique visitors over last September.  Sudden demand for news on Republican Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in September may have driven that dramatic increase. 

Two politics-centric sites, Politico.com (+219%) and TheHuffingtonPost.com (+457%), also saw notably large year over year percentage growth in September.

Meanwhile, Boston.com’s 122% above average growth can perhaps be attributed to Autumn baseball fever in the Hub.

Overall, all but three of the top 30 online news outlets, and all but one of the top 30 newspaper websites, attracted larger online audiences in September 2008 than they did the prior September.

View the top 30 newspaper websites for September in Editor & Publisher.

View the top 30 online news outlets for September in Editor & Publisher.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail.

The Beijing Olympics and the start of fall football season may have had something to do with the spike in traffic, Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online, noted.

“With broad interest in the Olympics, and the ramp up of the college and professional football seasons, August was a busy month for online sports fans,” Gibs said.  “The Web offered 24/7 access to news, results and video, and fans demonstrated a healthy appetite for information about their favorite athletes and teams.”

Overall, unique traffic to sports sites from workplaces grew from 33.4 million unique visitors in August 2007 to 42.3 million this August.

Working women made up a significant portion of that traffic, according to Nielsen.  The number of female unique visitors who visited sports-related websites from work in August grew by 37% — from 12 million in August 2007 to 16.4 million this August.  In comparison, sports sites drew 25.8 million male unique visitors this August — up by just 21% from 21.4 million visitors in August 2007.

Yahoo! Sports was the most popular online sports destination, attracting 18.7 million unique visitors at workplaces in August — a 112% increase over traffic to the site last August.  ESPN and FOX Sports on MSN rounded out the top three, with 11.9 million and 7.7 million unique visitors, respectively, according to Nielsen. 

NBC’s custom website, NBC Olympics, also attracted significant workplace traffic in August, drawing 13.8 million unique visitors — or 20% of the active at work Web population. 

Among the top ten sites, Fantasy Sports Ventures Network — up 285% over August 2007 — showed the largest growth in unique workplace visitors.

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

The top two U.S.-based Olympics online destinations, Yahoo Olympics and NBC Olympics, drew an average of 4.7 million and 4.3 million unique visitors each day between August 8 and August 18.

According to Nielsen, Olympics-related websites in the U.S. are drawing slightly larger audiences on work days than weekends. 

Nielsen also reported that daily traffic to NBC’s Olympics site typically peaked at noon during the first work week of the Games (August 11 – 15), as U.S. fans logged on during their lunch hours to check for news and updates.

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Read the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Nielsen’s findings.

Nineteen of the top 30 newspaper websites recorded double-digit, year-over-year percentage increases in unique traffic in July, according to data from Nielsen Online.

Ottaway Newspapers (+167%) saw the largest gain in unique visitors.  The Wall Street Journal also recorded an impressive 94% increase in unique traffic, while number one ranked NYtimes.com saw a 38% uptick.

But at 14 of the top 30 newspaper sites, the average number of minutes visitors spent on the sites declined this July, versus July 2007, according to Nielsen.

Five of the top 10 online newspapers reported declines in the average time spent per person.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the average time spent per person fell from 23 minutes in July 2007 to just under 10 minutes in July 2008.  Meanwhile, the average time spent per person at Boston.com declined by half — from more than 18 minutes in July 2007 to just over 9 minutes in July 2008.

Review Nielsen’s June 2008 U.S. newspaper Web traffic results.

Unique visitors to the video section of NBC’s Olympics site increased by nearly 140% – from 858,000 on Sunday, August 10, to 2,030,000 on Monday, August 11, Nielsen reported.

Meanwhile, traffic to Yahoo’s Olympics section grew 85% on Monday, compared to daily web traffic the prior day.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and on CNET.com.