One day after receiving its 5,000th hit, “My world” experienced its second-busiest day ever with 78 unique hits on Friday — 55 of them occurring between 5:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, and 28 of them coming from web surfers using search engines to look up the phrase “a duck in a noose.”

But the site, which at midday was on pace for between 120 and 130 hits by the end of the day, wound up falling just short of the all-time daily hits record of 80 when traffic dropped off sharply after 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. It is unclear why this occurred; more than half of the website’s daily traffic usually occurs after 2:00. Yet on Friday, there were only 17 hits — and only three “duck in a noose” hits — during the day’s final 10 hours.

One possible explanation is that as the sniper case was overshadowed by the day’s breaking news events, especially the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, the number of Internet searches for “a duck in a noose” diminished overall, returning the site to a traffic pattern more reminiscent of a typical day. The average daily traffic to “My world” is roughly 25 hits, roughly 13 or 14 of which typically happen after 2:00 p.m.

It is also unclear whether another flurry of “duck”-related hits might occur tomorrow or in the coming days. The possibility can’t be ruled out, since “My world” is still very highly rated in various search engine queries for the sniper’s mysterious words. Search-engine databases are always changing, but as of now, the phrase “duck in a noose” (surrounded by quotation marks) causes this website to come up third in an MSN search, while the words duck in a noose without quotes bring “My world” up eighth.

At any rate, May 28, 2002, my parents’ 25th anniversary, remains the #1 busiest day of all-time with 80 hits. Friday takes over second place from the website’s 74-hit launch day, Nov. 30, 2001, which now falls to third. Dropping to fourth and fifth place, respectively, are the 68 hits on Sept. 10, 2002 and the 65 on Sept. 11, 2002.