Thousands flock online to register to vote

Following Prime Minister Gordon Brown's announcement that the general election will take place on 6 May this year, the amount of people making voting-related searches online has rocketed.

During the week 3 to 10 April the amount of searches for the term 'register to vote' increased nine-fold compared with the week before, according to web analysis firm Hitwise.

The same week also saw a 169 per cent rise in general vote-related searches, including 'postal vote' and 'who should I vote for'.

About My Vote, the official voter registration website, saw a 252 per cent increase in people visiting the site, with a large number of those visitors aged between 18 and 24.

The traffic to the political party homepages and blogs increased too, by 31 per cent at the start of April with more than a third of surfers aged 55 and over.

Earlier this week a report found that the Tory website was the worst performing site among the political party sites during March.

And another report claimed that 70 per cent of voters don't think the parties are using the internet effectively enough in the run-up to the poll in May.