Akamai: News websites had ‘slight peak’ in traffic when Supreme Court upheld the health care law.

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

News websites had a slight peak in traffic Thurday morning when the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of 2010 health care law, Akamai Technologies Inc. said.

A Cambridge-based company that provides Internet content delivery services, Akamai counts close to 300 news websites among its customers, including BBC, Reuters, NPR, and The New York Times (which shares a corporate parent with The Boston Globe and Boston.com).

Traffic for Akamai’s news website customers peaked at about 3.15 million page views per minute at mid to late morning Thursday, Akamai said.

Previous events that prompted high traffic on news websites that use Akamai have often been soccer games that draw fans from around the world.

Two years ago, World Cup qualifying matches took place on the same day as tennis champs competed at Wimbledon. At one point, traffic peaked at about 10.3 million page views per minute, an all-time high for Akamai.

In 2010, coverage for the mid-term elections for the US Congress had traffic peaking on news websites that use Akamai at about 5.6 million page views per minute, the company said. That was good for a number five ranking on Akamai’s top 15 events for generating Web traffic to news sites.

Last year’s royal wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton generated about 5.4 million page views per minute. The wedding ranked seventh on Akamai’s list.

To crack Akamai’s top 15, an event would have to draw roughly 4.5 million page views or more per minute.

Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.