With Monday’s news that Lehman was filing to bankruptcy protection (it is now looks set to be acquired) and that Merrill Lynch was being acquired by Bank of America US Internet users stormed Stocks and Shares websites, pushing share of US Internet visits to the single highest daily level in three years. On Monday, visits to Stocks and Shares websites reached 1.63% of all US Internet visits, up 140% from Sunday and up 27% week on week.

This was the highest level the category has seen in the past three years. The second highest volume day for visits to Stocks and Shares websites was on 17th July 2008, around the time the Dow fell below 11,000.
Within the Stocks and Shares category, the biggest movers were websites for broker dealers. Visits to broker dealer websites among the top 100 Stocks and Shares websites were up 4 fold on Monday compared with the day before.
Among financial news websites, Yahoo! Finance dominated, receiving 24% of visits to Stocks and Shares websites. Visits to Yahoo! Finance increased 167% on Monday compared with Sunday and were up 32% compared with a week ago.
Next week, once search data is available, we’ll look at the language consumers are using to describe the crisis in search data.