Many in the US woke to the news of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Friday morning along with tsunami warnings for Hawaii and the west coast. As news and videos of the natural disaster spread, visits to the News & Media category hit a 3 year high on Friday, March 11th and increased 51% as compared to March 4th, the previous Friday. The market share of visits reached 7.23% of all US Internet visits and surpassed November 4, 2008 – Election Day, as the top day for traffic to the category. Daily visits to the News & Media category remain above the traffic levels of the previous week due to continued coverage of the aftermath of Friday’s events.

The top 3 News & Media website to grow and capture additional market share on Friday, March 11th as compared to the previous Friday were Yahoo! News, MSNBC and CNN.com. The rank for CNN.com – Video jumped to #6 within the News & Media category on Friday, up from #44 the previous day.

Earthquake and tsunami related terms accounted for 5 of the top 10 search terms driving traffic to the News & Media category on Friday.

The search term ‘japan earthquake’ ranked #8 among search terms driving traffic to All Categories on Friday, March 11th. In addition to News & Media websites, YouTube was also a common destination for coverage on Japan and ranked 2nd among downstream websites to receive traffic from searches on ‘japan earthquake’.