Web Firm Finds Clinton Site Falters During Debate

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign website was the only one of the candidates' sites to register a marked decrease in performance during the recent Democratic candidates' debate at South Carolina State University, according to the latest campaign home page performance benchmark by Gomez, Inc., a web experience management company.

Gomez says it found that the Clinton campaign site's home page response time was nearly three-times slower during the debate hours than it had been onaverage during the four days leading up to the debate Thursday evening. Prior to the debate, Clinton's average home page response time was slightly under two seconds, second fastest to Sen. Barack Obama's average home pageresponse time of slightly less than 1.5 seconds. Former Sen. John Edwards' home page trailed the pack of Democratic candidates, with average response time of more than 11 seconds during the week, and over 12 seconds during the debate.

Web sites of the other Democratic candidates who participated in the night debate in Orangeburg, S.C., did not showsignificant performance degradation, nor did MSNBC.com, which streamed the90-minute debate live online. Several candidates' sites actually recorded faster response times during the debate period, according to Gomez.

"We speculate that the infrastructure of Clinton's website may not beup to handling a major spike in visitors, which a campaign front-runner must expect and be able to accommodate," says William Agush, Gomez vice president of marketing. "They risk creating a negative user experience--and that could have negative consequences going forward."

Gomez says it measured the performance of seven of the eight Democratic candidates who participated in the April 26 debate: Sen. Joe Biden, Clinton, Sen. Chris Dodd, Edwards, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Obama, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Former senator Mike Gravel's site was not included in the benchmark, the company says.

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