The American Invasion: Obamamania in London

Forbes magazine has an interesting article out discussing the interest in Barack Obama in the UK, which it proves by noting that Obama's website was the 11th most visited site by UK web users in February. I'm not sure there's a web difference here however. While perhaps the web makes finding evidence of interest easier, other countries have long been interested in what happens with US elections - especially when there's a dynamic young candidate.

Also, its not clear to me how sustainable this interest is. I did a comparison of Google searches by UK users over the past year for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Gordon Brown. The trend definitely shows a lot of interest during the peak of primary season - all three Americans were briefly more popular search terms than Brown in February - and in Obama, who led Brown in searches for much of the spring. But Brown is now ahead of all three candidates again.