According to comScore, Google and Facebook were some of the biggest winners last year when it comes to the top gaining web properties and overall search market growth.
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, has released their report that highlights the major trends in Internet activity in the United States in 2007. This includes the top gaining web properties and site categories, and overall core search market growth. The biggest winners in 2007 featured some of the top Internet brands, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist.
comScore studied the growth in visitors of the top 100 U.S. Internet properties in 2007. Their study shows that 2007 was a strong year for many of the larger web properties. Facebook.com got a lot of benefit when they opened registration to all of us. Facebook jumped up 81 percent versus December 2006 to 34.7 million visitors in December 2007. Wikipedia went up 34 percent to nearly 52 million visitors, Craigslist.org went up 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors. And AT&T jumped up 27 percent to 30.2 million visitors, many because of AT&T’s deal with the iPhone. The Yellow Book Network jumped up 137 percent to 10.4 million visitors.
comScore also reports that “several of the top-gaining properties were driven by the acquisition of Web entities including, but not limited to, the following:
— Everyday Health gained 349 percent driven by its acquisition of Drugs.com and other sites.
— Women’s category leader, Glam Media, grew 213 percent during the year, due in large part to the addition of several new entities, including Quality Health Network, MyYearbook.com, and LifeScript.com, among others.
— Yellow Book Network grew 137-percent to 10.4 million visitors, as visitation to Yellowbook.com Sites tripled (up 207 percent t 4.6 million visitors) and one new entity was added to the property.
— iVillage.com: The Women’s Network gained 27 percent with the addition of Sugar Publishing, MakeoverSolutions.com, and iWin.com, among others.
— Demand Media added numerous entities under its Demand Media Knowledge and Demand Media Games media titles, which contributed to its 149-percent growth.
— OfficeMax’s dramatic 199-percent gain was driven primarily by a December 2007 surge in visitation to its popular viral holiday greetings site ElfYouself.com.”
comScore Top 20 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique
Visitors* (U.S.)
December 2007 vs. December 2006
Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Source: comScore Media Metrix
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Dec-06 Dec-07 % Change
Total U.S. Internet Audience 174,199 183,619 5
Everyday Health 2,690 12,073 349
Glam Media 7,994 25,028 213
OfficeMax 5,130 15,339 199
Demand Media 5,999 14,958 149
Yellow Book Network 4,386 10,388 137
ValueClick Sites 6,339 13,013 105
Facebook.com 19,105 34,658 81
WorldNow - ABC Owned Sites 8,714 15,474 78
Craigslist.org 14,075 24,468 74
Experian Interactive 8,054 12,500 55
Yellowpages.com Network 16,168 24,453 51
AmericanGreetings Property 11,982 18,102 51
Comcast Corporation 18,716 26,445 41
UGO 8,450 11,912 41
The Mozilla Organization 10,948 15,267 39
Answers.com Sites 10,707 14,899 39
Wikipedia Sites 38,585 51,851 34
iVillage.com: The Womens Network 13,545 17,234 27
AT&T, Inc. 23,833 30,212 27
Internet Broadcasting Systems 9,894 12,394 25
*Ranking based on the top 100 properties in December 2007.
comScore also said that the “top-gaining site categories in 2007 reflected trends in both the online and offline worlds. The politics category grabbed the top position, gaining 35 percent, as the 2008 presidential election and primary season kicked into high gear. Women’s community sites also jumped 35 percent, as the top two properties in the category, Glam Media and iVillage.com, saw strong growth. With the ever-increasing coverage of celebrity news, from Britney Spears’ meltdowns to Anna Nicole Smith’s death, entertainment news sites jumped 32 percent. Online classifieds had a strong 2007 growing 31 percent versus year ago, as it continued to impinge on traditional news media’s classified revenues.”
comScore Top 10 Gaining Categories by Percentage Change in Unique
Visitors (U.S.)
December 2007 vs. December 2006
Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Source: comScore Media Metrix
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Dec-06 Dec-07 % Change
Total U.S. Internet Audience 174,199 183,619 5
Politics 6,192 8,384 35
Community - Women 51,632 69,854 35
Entertainment - News 37,093 49,023 32
Classifieds 31,867 41,688 31
Career - Training and Education 7,865 10,279 31
Gay/Lesbian 1,843 2,367 28
Retail - Consumer Goods 28,829 35,936 25
Finance - News/Research 43,317 52,064 20
Teens 23,313 27,979 20
Religion 19,101 22,886 20
In 2007, searches at the five major core search engines increased 15 percent to 9.6 billion searches. Google Sites led with 5.6 billion searches in December 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous year. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 2.2 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (940 million), Time Warner Network (442 million), and Ask Network (415 million).
comScore Core Search Report*
December 2007 vs. December 2006
Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch 2.0
Search Queries (MM)
Percent
Change
Dec-07 vs.
Core Search Entity Dec-06 Dec-07 Dec-06
Total Core Search 8,348 9,636 15 %
Google Sites 4,317 5,629 30 %
Yahoo! Sites 2,300 2,211 -4 %
Microsoft Sites 871 940 8 %
Time Warner Network 465 442 -5 %
Ask Network 396 415 5 %
* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.
More than 113 billion core searches were conducted in the U.S. during all of 2007, with Google Sites accounting for nearly 64 billion, representing a 56 percent share of the market.