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August 29, 2008

Olympics Web Sites Take Gold, Mobiles Take Silver


An industry analysis group is saying that the Web sites documenting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing should get a gold medal, while the mobile sites come in second with silver.
 
Keynote Competitive Research is announcing the results of its analysis surrounding the speed and reliability of Internet and mobile sites central to the Olympic Games, in a press release today.
 
“The Olympics is always one of the biggest, most watched events on a global scale and the 2008 Beijing Games had a record-breaking number of viewers,” said Shawn White, director of external operations for Keynote. “The world was not only turning to their television sets for the latest, but leveraging the Web. It’s encouraging to see that organizations took the appropriative steps before the games to ensure their sites could provide an optimal experience to end users eager to follow their favorite athlete or learn more about the latest scandal.”



 
The Web sites monitored – including 12 of the worldwide Olympics sponsors and 15 sites dedicated to Olympics information and news – scored nearly “perfect 10s,” while the five mobile news and sports sites faltered.
 
U.S. Track and Field ranked first in performance and second in availability among the Internet sites. Reuters (News - Alert) Olympics’ site was the disappointment, encountering an almost 100 percent slowdown beginning on Aug. 16, with the availability of the site starting to drop to almost 94 percent and hovering around 96 percent until closing ceremonies. At times, the site was unavailable or specific page elements did not load.
 
On the mobile Web side, the Olympics portals of NBC and Yahoo experienced a few problems, with the average availability of NBC at 95 percent and Yahoo at 92 percent, the study says. CNN’s main portal came in first with 97 percent availability, with ESPN (News - Alert) and MSN coming in second with 96 percent.

“Mobile Web sites such as Yahoo’s Olympic portal saw significant drops in availability once the games began compared to measurements taken earlier in the month,” said Nisheeth Mohan, mobile product manager at Keynote. “As people are leveraging their mobile devices more for news and entertainment, it’s paramount that mobile Web sites prepare for the onslaught in traffic events such as the Olympics bring.”
 
Using Keynote Transaction Perspective, which uses Internet Explorer to provide a true end-user perspective of Web performance, and Keynote Application Perspective, a high-frequency operational Web site monitoring service, Keynote monitored the Official Web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, U.S. Track and Field, International Association of Athletics Federations, the Official Web site for the Olympic Movement, Olympics News, the U.S. Olympic Committee, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Radio, Fox Sports, StubHub, Reuters, Yahoo, Associated Press and NBC.
 
Keynote also monitored the site responsiveness and reliability of 12 Olympic sponsors’ Web sites, including Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Kodak (News - Alert), Lenovo, Manulife, McDonalds, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung and Visa. Real time measurements were conducted every 15 minutes from 112 locations across 30 countries, covering 53 of the world’s top ISPs.

For mobile Web sites, Keynote measured the response time and availability of ESPN, Yahoo Olympics, NBC Olympics, MSN, and CNN, using Keynote Mobile Application Perspective. The mobile data was collected on an hourly basis from four U.S. cities over AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (News - Alert) networks.

Keynote Systems (News - Alert) provides on-demand test and measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience. As an independent and trusted third-party, Keynote provides IT and marketing executives with an unbiased view into their Internet services from around the world. Keynote, headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., has a market-leading infrastructure of 2,500 measurement computers and mobile devices in more than 240 locations around the world.

Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Eve's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Eve Sullivan





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