Web coverage is beating the previous record viewing for the Michael Jackson funeral by 21%; Google/YouTube still working on assembling numbers.

The ratings for the British royal wedding are still being tallied but early indications are lots of people were watching on TV and online.

Yahoo! said Friday that its live video stream of the wedding set an all time record for traffic, beating the previous record viewing for the Michael Jackson funeral by 21%.

“Overall traffic is surpassing expectations and we are breaking records in terms of traffic and video consumption,” says a Yahoo spokesperson.

That is particularly impressive since Google and YouTube were the official outlets for the live video stream. A Google/YouTube spokesperson said Friday they were still working on assembling the traffic numbers for their services.


Yahoo! Says the requests per second for the wedding surpassed the previous record set by the Japan earthquake with 40,000 per second at the peak, compared to 33,000 per second for the earthquake.

By 11 a.m. est on Friday Yahoo! Had already sent 14 million clicks to its wedding coverage. The top two stories were “the dress” and “the kiss” which had by that point more than 6 million clicks combined.

Yahoo! Estimates that twice as many women were clicking on its coverage than men.

The results, notes the Yahoo! spokesperson, are “especially impressive given that this event happened during non-peak hours.”

“We anticipate total video audience figures to break all previous records,” added the spokesperson.