Daily Research News Online no. 4734 - Educational Reference Web Sites on the Rise

Educational Reference Web Sites on the Rise

October 24 2005

Adult Internet users are increasingly going online to learn, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Its latest figures show that use of educational reference web sites, such as encylopaedias and dictionaries, grew by 22% this year. Other new data from the company includes the top ten web sites, and top ten online advertisers.

Reference sites attracted 46.4 million people - nearly 31% of active Internet users - in September. Wikipedia, the free, group-edited web encyclopedia, was the fastest growing educational reference site, and attracted nearly 13 million unique web users over the month, representing 289% year-on-year growth.

Yahoo! Education drew more than three million users to its online reference tools, up 205% from last year. Available tools include a Spanish and English dictionary, thesaurus, literary quotes, Shakespeare's works, a world factbook and Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body.

The three other fastest growing reference sites were eHow (97% growth), CollegeBoard.com (58%) and City-Data.com (58%).

NetRatings found that more than 53% of users of reference sites were college-educated adults aged 35+. 37% were between 35 and 49, while just 16% were aged under 18.

Gerry Davidson, Senior Media Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, says the growth of these sites is due to the fact that they are free and quick. He adds: 'The 'wiki' phenomenon offers the added element of user interaction, which appeals to college-educated web users' sense of altruism by allowing them to add or correct online content'.

Top web sites
NetRatings has also released the top ten web sites by brand, and by parent company (defined as a collection of multiple domains with consistent branded content) for September. The top ten parent companies are: