(CNN) — A record number of people may have watched live video of the royal wedding online.
But the Friday wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton failed to make the top five Web news events of all time — being topped by various sporting events and the 2010 U.S. midterm elections.
Global Internet traffic on news-focused websites peaked at 5.3 million page views per minute at about 8:30 a.m. (ET) on Friday, according to Akamai, an Internet service provider and traffic monitor.
That makes the wedding the sixth biggest event in Internet history.
The top event remains a World Cup soccer match and the longest Wimbledon tennis match, which happened at the same time in June 2010. More than 10.3 million people per minute clicked on news stories about those sporting events.
Will and Kate did beat out President Obama’s election in November 2008, which got 4.3 million page views per minute, Akamai says.
Of course, fewer people in general went to the Internet for news two years ago than do now, which makes these kinds of comparisons a bit tricky, said Jeff Young, a spokesman for Akamai.
“Technology has come a long way since then,” Young said.
Top Web events:
1. World Cup qualifying matches and longest-ever Wimbledon match, June 2010: 10.4 million 2. European Cup games, November 2010: 6.4 million 3. First day of the World Cup, June 2010: 6 million 4. U.S. midterm elections, November 2010: 5.7 million 5. U.S. vs. Algeria World Cup match, June 2010: 5.6 million 6. William and Kate’s royal wedding, April 2011: 5.4 million Source: Akamai Net Usage Index Figures are expressed in page views per minute, at the peak of readership
