Football beats Olympics online

The Olympics may be taking place in Beijing at the moment but football-related sites are still the most popular among British surfers.

With the football league season one game old and the Premier League yet to start, surfers in the UK are lapping up football news, according to web-monitoring firm Hitwise.

Football websites currently account for a third of all traffic in Hitwise's sports category, said Hitwise, and visits to football sites has already reached a level higher than at any point last season.

"The cause of this sudden spike in traffic is the commencement of pre-season activity and all the foreign tours, friendlies and mini-tournaments this entails. Transfer activity is also a big contributor, and a summer full of rumours has helped maintain traffic levels," said Robin Goad of Hitwise.

Hitwise said that Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Barry and Dmitar Berbatov were the three most searched-for footballers at present, though the situation had been fluctuating over the summer.

"Searches for both David Villa and Andrei Arshavin shot up following star performances at the Euros and the inevitable links with Premiership clubs that followed. However, searches for both the Russian and the Spaniard soon dropped off again once it become unlikely that they would be plying their trade in the England this season," said Goad.

www.hitwise.com