The Tiger Woods sex scandal has been a boon for online publications, even though it hasn’t generated the same amount of Internet traffic as Michael Jackson’s death or President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Provocative remarks by Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz at an investor conference in New York this week illustrate how major Internet channels and niche publications are benefiting from the Woods controversy. Known for her off-color commentary, Bartz told financial analysts Tuesday that the Woods story is “better than Michael Jackson dying” for helping Yahoo make money, because it is easier to sell ads against salacious content than morbid stories. “It’s kind of hard to put an ad up next to a funeral,” she said. In response to a question, Bartz even said Woods will “absolutely” help Yahoo make its numbers this quarter, a comment the company now says was meant to be a joke. Google Inc. and Yahoo, which combined process more than 80 percent of all Internet searches in the U.S., said they’ve seen a significant spike in traffic from people looking for information on the golf superstar and his alleged extramarital affairs. Yahoo says searches for Woods’ name are up more than 3,900 percent over the last 30 days. Neither Google nor Yahoo would provide specifics about how many more people were searching. But the traffic bump still is not as pronounced as those that surrounded the entertainer’s death in June and Obama’s inauguration in January, both companies said. Search volume at the peak of interest in Jackson’s death was more than twice as heavy as the biggest days of searching for news about Woods, Google said. Revelations about Woods’ private life began emerging last month after he crashed his sport utility vehicle outside his home in a gated community in Florida. Despite holding a distant second-place ranking to Google in search, Yahoo outflanked…

Follow this link:
Woods Scandal a Boon To Internet Publications

Related posts

• Twitter: bigger than Michael Jackson and Obama (0)
• Twitter: bigger than Michael Jackson and Obama (0)
• Tough First Year for Yahoo’s Tough-Talking CEO (0)
• The New Office Starter 2010 for Windows7 (0)
• Study: Americans Absorb 34 Gigabytes of Data Each Day (0)