Where the Olympics News Drove the Most News Traffic

Yahoo, ESPN, USA Today, and the AP captured the most news search traffic. Simone Biles was the Olympic athlete driving the most search clicks.

The Olympics drove millions of visits to news websites, and we analyzed which sites did the best job of capturing it based on search interest worldwide and for the US, UK, and France.

Key takeaways

• Yahoo, ESPN, USA Today, and AP News got the most search clicks, worldwide, on their Olympics coverage.
• Olympics news traffic made the biggest difference for Canada’s CBC broadcast network, France’s Eurosport and L’Equipe, based on traffic to their websites during the games versus the days before.
• In the US, Yahoo, USA Today, NBC News, AP News, and ESPN each gained more than 1 million search clicks from Olympics coverage.
• In the UK, the search traffic leaders were The Daily Mail, The Guardian, the BBC, and The Independent.
• In France, Eurosport, L’Equipe, Franceinfo, La Dépêche, Liberation, and Ouest France attracted the most Olympics search traffic.
• Basketball and football (soccer) attracted the most search clicks, although “artistic swimming” also attracted a lot of curiosity.
• Simone Biles was, by far, the individual athlete driving the most search activity – more than 21 million search clicks on her name alone.

To identify the news websites that gained the most traffic from the Olympics, we started with a search keyword list that included “olympics” and “olympic” as well as the names of many of the social media stars of the games and all the athletes who won gold medals.

News publication search winners, worldwide: Yahoo, ESPN, USA Today, AP

Yahoo, ESPN, USA Today, and the Associated Press got the most searchers clicking on links to their websites.

To see which websites got the biggest lift from their Olympics coverage, we looked at web traffic from the day before the opening ceremonies (peak time for preview stories) through Sunday’s closing ceremonies, compared with the average traffic for the same number of days before the start of the games. The biggest winners there were Canada’s CBC broadcast network (cbc.ca, up 126.4%) and France’s Eurosport (eurosport.fr, up 97.6%) and L’Equipe {lequipe.fr, up 61.5%).

Also showing significant gains were the website of NBC’s Today Show (today.com, up 24.3%) and Sports Illustrated magazine (si.com, up 18.4%), and Al Jazeera (aljazeera.com, up 18.1%).

News sites trailed Wikipedia and Olympics.com in search traffic

While Olympics searches drove traffic to news publications, they drove even more to informational sites including Wikipedia and the official Olympics website, as well as YouTube and social media sites.

Search traffic winners in the US: Yahoo, USA Today, NBC News

Search traffic winners in the UK: Daily Mail, Guardian, BBC

Search traffic winners in France: Eurosport and L’Equipe

The Events driving the most search traffic

Although “artistic swimming” captured a lot of search traffic, more than 8.5 million search clicks over 28 days, the real winner is basketball. The search phrases “olympics basketball,” “basketball 2024 olympics,” and “basketball olympics” attracted a combined 17.7 million search clicks, and “3×3 basketball 2024 olympics” pulled in another 1.7 million. Football (as in soccer) won another 6.1 million clicks.

Simone Biles was the athlete driving the most search traffic

The desire for more information about individual athletes was one of the main drivers of search traffic related to the Olympics. The individual athletes driving the most search traffic were Simone Biles (gymnastics), Novak Djokovic (tennis), Coco Gauff (tennis), Jasmine Paolini (tennis), and Scottie Scheffler (golf). That’s based on an analysis of a keyword list including many of the social media stars of the games (who didn’t necessarily drive as much search interest), as well as the names of all of the athletes who won gold medals as individuals (not including all the members of national teams).

The name “Simone Biles” not only drove the most search clicks – more than 21 million within a 28 day period – but many other searches containing her name plus another keyword or two were at the top of the list.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All names, brands, trademarks, and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The data, reports, and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb consist of or include estimated metrics and digital insights generated by Similarweb using its proprietary algorithms, based on information collected by Similarweb from multiple sources using its advanced data methodologies. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of such data, reports, and materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on such data, reports, and materials.

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".