WALES’ World Cup exploits caused a meltdown on a travel blogger’s website – with confused Americans asking if Wales is a country.

Kieren Windsor, who launched Wales Guidebook during the summer, saw a 581 per cent surge in traffic to his site after Wales kicked off their campaign against the USA last Monday (November 21).

The 30-year-old has now had to undergo a hasty upgrade to stop his website from crashing after his article, “Is Wales a country?”, quickly picked up traction from Americans who took to Google for research.

Top enquiries have been “What language do they speak in Wales?”, “Is Wales England?”, “Is Wales good at soccer?”, “Where is Wales?”, and “How is Wales a Country?”

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Kieren has now produced a list of the Top 10 links between the two countries as Wales was also the Land of their Fathers to many of America’s Founding Fathers.

At least five of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Welsh or of Welsh descent.

On top of that there have been at least eight US Presidents with Welsh ancestry, including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

Kieren, 30, a business and marketing graduate from Newtown in Powys, said: "Typically, the people who read my blog are those from other parts of the UK looking to plan a trip to Wales or Welsh people visiting other parts of their country.

"However, this last week has seen a surge in readers from the United States with almost 75 per cent of those reading my ‘Is Wales a Country’ article being Americans.

"I wrote the article when I launched the website over summer, but suddenly it’s the most-read article on my site by a mile as people are finding it through Google search.

"Even since the match against America, traffic is continuing to rise. Even the city of Wales, in Alaska, the most westerly city in the USA, population 152, has had a huge spike in interest this week.”

Kieren, whose mission is to promote Wales as a travel destination, started a backpacking travel blog as a hobby but saw it morph into a full time business in the space of five years after learning about the role of influencers during his employment.

He added: "The interest in my article has been such that I've had to upgrade my site to accommodate the amount of traffic it's been getting since the start of the World Cup.

"It's great that people are taking an interest in Wales and are going to the trouble to find out more about it.

"I really hope the interest lasts beyond the World Cup and people start to recognise Wales as a country with its own identity just like the rest of the UK."

Kieren pointed out that since the 1-1 draw thanks to Wales captain Gareth Bale, many people from around the world have taken to Twitter admitting they'd never heard of Wales.

According to Google Trends, there was a huge spike in people searching “where is Wales” and “is Wales a country” during the match earlier this week.

The top five countries from which people searched for the answers were Qatar, Lebanon, the USA, the UAE and Canada.

Such confusion even prompted an article in the Washington Post pointing out that Wales is not in England.

Jim Jones, managing director of North Wales Tourism Ltd said: "It's not surprising that the World Cup has prompted a huge interest in Wales as well as Kieren's blog.

"Many people in America and around the world have never heard of Wales so taking part for the first time in 64 years will raise our profile a lot more.

"The interest it will generate in our country will help put us on the map internationally.

"Players and fans do an awful lot for the promotion of our country - the passion of the people in the crowd shows just how proud we are of our nation - we saw that when the Welsh national anthem was played at the stadium in Qatar.

"That passion isn't going unnoticed. We need the team to go out and perform the way we know they can and it will generate interest all over the world, not just in the US.

"The Welsh will stand out a mile with their passion and pride and it will do us the world of good."