Hot, hot, hot: Weather sites are on fire

With Britain experiencing a heatwave this week, UK web surfers have been logging on to weather sites in their droves to find out just how hot it is - acting as a reminder to website operators everywhere of just how much seasonal events can affect traffic online as well as off.

Weather websites in the UK saw traffic levels rise almost as fast as the mercury on the hottest day of the year, Wednesday.

Australian online competitive intelligence service Hitwise reported that traffic to the BBC weather site increased by 50 per cent since the start of the week, while traffic to weather.co.uk increased by 59 per cent. BBC Weather was the 23rd most visited UK site on Wednesday, said Hitwise, and weather.co.uk increased its overall position on Hitwise's list of Britain's most popular websites by 14 places.

Just under five per cent of BBC Weather's visitors then went to the Met Office website, while 1.41 per cent of traffic went to a BBC site about climate change – evidence that Brits really are concerned about the effects of global warming, said Hitwise.

In terms of most popular search terms, Hitwise reports that the top three keywords were "weather", "BBC weather" and "weather forecast".

Matt Loney writes for ZDNet.co.uk