Last week we reported that visits to NBCOlympics.com nearly exceeded visits to New York Times as Olympics fans opted for real-time online coverage over pre-recorded television results. As we expected, visits to NBCOlympics.com peaked on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006, the day of the women’s individual figure skating finals. On that day, NBCOlympics.com ranked at number 76 among all Internet domains, and the New York Times came in at number 113.

Who was the most popular female figure skater online? Interestingly, until the week of competition, the female skater with the greatest share of Internet searches was non-competitor Michelle Kwan, who pulled out of the games due to injury. Last week’s silver medal performance from Sasha Cohen led her to the top of the search charts for last week (week ending Feb. 25, 2006). I was surprised to see ice dancing silver medalist Tanith Belbin in second place among female figure skater searches, until I saw that another popular search term was “tanith belbin photos.” Not surprisingly, sex appeal is a strong driver of Internet search, as I found earlier in the games when I found that Jeremy Bloom was one of the most searched for Olympic athletes.