July 25th marked the end of the NFL lockout, which officially began on March 11th when the CBA expired. As a result, the search term “NFL lockout” driving traffic to the Sports – Football category doubled during that time period and peaked the week ending July 9th. The most popular search terms around the lockout in the 12 rolling weeks ending July 30th were “NFL lockout”, “NFL lockout news”, and “NFL lockout furloughs cuts”.

The web traffic data shows the expected increase in traffic to the Sports – Football category during the 2010 football season with a decline during February 2011 following the Super Bowl. However, due to the lockout, the category experienced a boost in traffic between March and July and visits to the Sports – Football category were up 72% year over year.

The websites in the Sports – Football category that received the largest share of traffic from search term “NFL lockout” were FoxSports NFL, ESPN.com NFL, and Yahoo! Sports NFL. Traffic to the FoxSports NFL from the search term “NFL lockout” spiked the week ending May 14th when mediations resumed and overall the site’s market share has tripled since the first week of the lockout. Average visit time to FoxSports NFL peaked the week ending July 30th where visitors spent an average of 3 minutes and 32 seconds on the site; the longest average visit time since April 30th which was 4 minutes 32 seconds following a temporary lift of the lockout.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Custom Data & Insights team for today’s analysis.