Apple, Google and Amazon Lead Web Site Growth
December 21 2005
Numbers visiting Apple's web site grew by 57% in the year to November, while MSN achieved just 2% growth, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings. The fastest-growing sites overall are being driven by young web users, with image hosting site PhotoBucket leading the way with 1,492% growth.
The study identifies the fastest growing sites among the USA's top ten web brands, as follows. The numbers of unique visitors for November are shown (with % growth between November 2004 and November 2005 in brackets).
- Apple 30.84m (57%)
- Google 85.52m (29%)
- Amazon 42.5m (16%)
- MapQuest 35.08m (13%)
- Real 34.36m (12%)
- eBay 56.33m (10%)
- Yahoo! 103.88m (10%)
- Microsoft 96m (8%)
- AOL 74.32m (4%)
- MSN 91.35m (2%)
Apple's growth was driven by traffic to the increasingly popular iTunes. Longtime leader Yahoo! attracted the largest unique audience, garnering nearly 104m unique visitors during November, and growing 10% during the year.
Gerry Davidson, Senior Media Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings commented: 'Among the top Web brands, fierce competition for share of online visitors continues to be a catalyst for the launch of new products and features. These additions appear to be spearheading much of the top web brand growth.'
The company also released data on the fastest growing web brands overall (from the 2,000+ sites that met minimum reporting levels). The top ten is as follows:
- PhotoBucket 15.65m (up 1,492%)
- MySpace 24.5m (752%)
- Facebook 5.87m (530%)
- Memegen.net 1.96m (446%)
- Slate 3.45m (390%)
- M&Ms 3.04m (364%)
- LimeWire 7.65m (345%)
- Heavy.com 2.44m (301%)
- Wikipedia 17.64m (291%)
- Mate1.com 2.18m (265%)
The proportion of young visitors (aged between 12 and 24) among users of these fast-growing sites is approximately 50 to 90% higher than for the average web site.
According to Davidson: 'Sites that strongly appeal to generation Y are those at which they can control the content, and which provide a desirable service in an entertaining format. It's not surprising that many of the fastest growing sites fall into the social networking, blogging, and online member community genres.'
The agency is online at
www.nielsen-netratings.com.
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
