England scores well in web World Cup

The England FA web site performed better than the squad during the World Cup, according to researchers

Application optimisation specialist Mercury has released its Web World Cup report on the performance of the sites of nations competing in the tournament this summer, and placed three UK sites in the top 10.

Mercury used its availability management and monitoring capabilities to assess the sites of each country's football association and leading broadcasters every week, measuring response times and overall user experience.

It then ranked each site accordingly. The England FA web site came third, the BBC's World Cup Page was eighth and Sky Sports took ninth place. The web sites of Germany and France's football associations were ranked first and second respectively.

"Everyone has had four years to think about the infrastructure behind their web site and the technology they want to deploy, so in an ideal world they would have planned to cope with surges in demand," said Mercury's European communications director, Paul Maher. "Clearly this hasn't happened though and it has been a patchy story across Europe."