While much of the Web has focused this week on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) has quietly boosted his online audience to close in on the lead long held by his rival.

Propelled by a surge in popularity in the blogosphere and by his recent negative attack ads, McCain campaign messages pulled in 36 million page views between August 10 and 24 compared to 38 million for Obama's, according to the "Who really Owns the Web" ? study released this week by Attributor Corp.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Atrributor, which tracks which Web sites post content from its clients, captured the key issues and speeches posted on the official campaign Web sites of Obama and McCain and then tracked the distribution of each candidate's words across 25 billion Web pages to estimate the audience reach, the company noted.

During the two weeks leading up to the convention, McCain's words and ads surged through the blogosphere, which had long been Obama's stronghold, the report noted. Almost 350 new bloggers picked up McCain's messages during the period, 30% more than added Obama's content during the period, the report said.

"This translated into a 2:1 blog page view advantage across U.S. visitors over the last two weeks and ate into Obama's overall audience lead in blogs," Attributor noted. "For the first time [McCain's] estimated monthly blog traffic increased more than Obama's - by more than 200,000 page views. Obama's audience lead in the blogosphere has shrunk [by] nearly 10%."

In addition, the study noted recent negative attack ads directed by the McCain campaign at Obama appear to be paying off, as Web pages containing the ads received 2.8 million page views, almost three times more than the total for similar Obama advertisements.

The study also noted that:

McCain's words were featured 80% more often than Obama's on news sites during the study period.

McCain's messages were picked up by Web sites more from his position statements(55%)than his speeches.

Obama's messages were picked up far more often through his speeches(67%)than his position statements(33%).