• by February 25, 2004

Leave it to a spoiler to siphon off Web traffic. Ralph Nader, who threw his hat into the 2000 Democratic presidential race, has entered the fray again, and his site www.nader.org saw a 114.3 percent traffic spike on Feb. 22--the day the consumer advocate announced his candidacy on national TV--according to Hitwise, a Web data research firm.

Nader's www.naderexplore04.org spiked 136.1 percent, and www.ralphdontrun.net surged 140 percent, Hitwise reported. On Feb. 22, Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry's www.johnkerry.com saw a 22.6 percent increase in traffic, while North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' site posted a 4 percent decline in traffic.

Hitwise clickstream data found that Kerry was the only candidate to have visits leaving his site on Sunday for ralphnader.com (1.59 percent). The researcher said that 11 percent of visitors that day to Edwards' site went on to Kerry's site. However, the data also shows that Kerry was the only candidate to have visitors leaving his site for ralphnader.com (1.59 percent).

Interestingly, Hitwise notes that visitors to Howard Dean's www.deanforamerica.com have gone over to Kerry's and Edwards' sites at the same 2.78 percent rate. The Vermont Governor dropped out of the presidential race last week.