Nu-ravers Klaxons (pictured to the right) were the surprise winners of the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize this week, beating favourite Amy Winehouse. However, it was the ‘troubled’ soul singer that received most of the press attention following her performance at the awards ceremony. Internet searches for 'amy winehouse' have increased by 84% over the last four weeks and have tripled from the 14th January, when her biggest hit "Rehab" went to number one in the UK.

With the intense media speculation about Winehouse’s health, 6 of the top 10 websites visited by people searching for 'amy winehouse' were in our News and Media category, while the singer’s homepage was the single most popular site with 30% of traffic. This helped Winehouse just nudge head of Klaxons yesterday in the competition to gain website visitors on the back of the Mercury hype. They both also overtook fellow nominees, and last year’s winners, Artic Monkeys.

By the way, if you want my opinion – which you probably don’t – I think Bat for Lashes were robbed, just like Hot Chip last year.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.

Flickr Image By Rich_Lem