AARON SCHATZ, who tracks traffic for Lycos emails some interesting observations on Pim Fortuyn:

Hi. I thought it might interest you, and your readers, that Pim Fortuyn came out as the #32 most-searched topic on the Internet this week, according to the Lycos 50. That is quite astonishing, given that our user base is almost entirely English-speaking (mostly American, with a clear amount of Canada, UK, and Australia traffic) and news stories rarely make it onto the Lycos 50 because people go to specific news sites rather than searching for news topics in the search engine.

Fortuyn received as many searches as Daniel Pearl’s murder, for example, and Pearl only received that many searches after rumors surfaced that the videotape of his execution was available online (video, particularly video not available elsewhere, drives Internet news searches). Even the Andrea Yates case only peaked at #44 on our list.

In addition, Pim’s assassin Volkert van der Graaf received more searches on Lycos last week than popular celebrities like Alyssa Milano and the Dave Matthews Band.

I think this is another demonstration that Fortuyn’s murder was a very big story, even outside of Holland.

As the Rainmakers say, it’s a little tiny world, just like a little tiny town.