Last week, the forthcoming Democratic National Convention and Vice-President selection drove the 2nd highest share of visits to each of the websites of the presidential candidates in the past year. The only week with a higher share of visits included the Super Tuesday primaries. The market share of visits to BarackObama.com jumped 53% and 46% to JohnMcCain.com from the previous week.

While both websites are experiencing greater traffic volume, the increase in visitors is driving down the average visit time from earlier this year. These shorter visits provide a more limited opportunity to distribute desired information across the audience, emphasizing ease of use in the design & layout to help visitors quickly find what they are looking for on the websites.

In the weeks leading up to the DNC, Barack Obama started a mobile campaign to text his followers to become the first to know about his running mate selection. While many have critiqued the timing of the actual text being received after many news outlets reported the VP pick, at Hitwise we found that plenty of searchers were seeking information about the texts. Among the top 350 search terms that drove traffic to Barackobama.com last week, 28% were related to the VP selection, with 12% of those specifically referring to the texts. Searches that broadly included Obama’s name commanded the largest share of the search terms at 33%. Other searches related to facts about Obama’s birth certificate, local campaign volunteering activities, and specific issues.

The fast moving search terms for a custom category of the two websites of the presidential candidates were also dominated by curious searchers seeking info about the texts and the VP pick. Next week should also deliver plenty of search activity around Politics as the DNC wraps up, McCain selects a VP, and the and the Republican National Convention is set to begin.