Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US

LinkedIn Traffic Up 323% in Past Year, Users More Likely to be on Gmail

2007-07-13T16:33:27Z

Have you been getting a flurry in LinkedIn invitations in the past few months? I have been receiving a few requests a week, so I wasn't surprised to find that the market share of US visits to LinkedIn was up 323% in the past year (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 7/8/06), and up 17% in the past four weeks alone (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 6/8/07). As of last week, LinkedIn ranked at #23 in the Hitwise Employment and Training category.

What did surprise me in looking at the upstream data for LinkedIn was that Gmail figured more prominently than usual. As of last week, Yahoo Mail leads over Gmail in market share of total US visits by more than 10 to 1, but Linked In receives only 3X more upstream traffic from Yahoo! Mail as Gmail. This relationship can be seen by examining these two charts side by side. Hotmail is also less represented among Linked In users than normal. It appears that LinkedIn still has early adopter appeal, just as Gmail does, and is poised for even greater growth as the word gets out.

Flickr Traffic up 38% in Past Four Weeks, Now #2 Photo Site

2007-07-09T17:47:11Z

In June, Yahoo! Photos began to close, and users are being encouraged to join Flickr. Later in the month, Yahoo! began including Flickr images in Yahoo! Image Search. These efforts have resulted in an increase in Flickr's US market share of 38% in the past four weeks (week ending 7/7/07 vs. week ending 6/9/07). Flickr is now the #2 photography website in the US, with 6.42% of category visits for the week ending 7/7/07. Photobucket still leads with a whopping 43.5% share . Here is a list of the top 5 photography sites as of last week. Back in March 2007, Flickr was at #3 with a market share of 4.57%.

You can see on the chart below how Flickr overtook Yahoo! Photos at the beginning of June (in the purple and navy lines on the left axis). You can also see just how much Yahoo! Image Search results helped increase Flickr's traffic (in the thin lines on the right axis). As of last week, Yahoo! Image Search was the leading source of traffic to Flickr, accounting for nearly 18% of its upstream visits. Previously Google had been its largest souce of traffic.

It is worth noting that Flickr has a truly global footprint, and has greater share of the photography category in other markets. Spend a few minutes on Flickrvision and you will get a sense for Flickr's global reach. Hitwise global data shows that Flickr is the #2 photography site (with Photobucket at #1) in both the UK and Australia, with about 10% market share in both countries. Expect it to keep growing both here and abroad.

Social Networking for Moms, Retirees, and the Ill

2007-07-03T19:39:07Z

Often we get asked about up-and-coming social networks. Three focused communities have been growing rapidly this year: CafeMom, a network for mothers, Daily Strength, a support community for those with health issues and other life problems, and Eons, a social network for the 50+ set.

Here are some stats on these sites:

CafeMom seems to be appealing to MySpace users as they become parents: in June 2007, more than 25% of upstream visits to CafeMom came from MySpace. In addition, 78% of its users were under the age of 34. Social networking is not just for the young and single, also evidenced by Eons, which of course is dominated by users in the 45-54 and 55+ age groups. Interestingly, Daily Strength, which is predominately female (82% of visits) has a broad age range, with 93% of its visits coming from users between the ages of 25 and 54.

While none of these sites ranks yet within the top 20 social networks, I am encouraged the growth of these niche communities as more users engage with Web 2.0.

YouTube: 50% More Traffic than Other Video Sites Combined

2007-06-27T13:22:55Z

YouTube's growth has not begun to slow yet this year. Hitwise traffic data shows that the market share of US visits to YouTube has increased by 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007 (this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos). In comparison, the market share of visits to a custom category of 64 other video sites increased by only 8% in that period. As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined. Here is a ranking of the top 10 sites in that custom category for May 2007.

Today I will be moderating a panel on video search optimization and marketing at Searchnomics 2007. Search engines are responsible for about 20% of traffic to video sites, including YouTube. Users are increasingly finding links to video pages in search engine results - and going to them. For the four weeks ending June 24, 2006 Hitwise captured 23,696 search terms sending traffic to the custom cateogry of 65 video sites. A year later, for the four weeks ending June 23, 2007, Hitwise captured 110,775 search terms sending traffic to the same category. Not only are more individual searches ending up at video sites, but clickstream data shows that more traffic is leaving search engines for video sites. The chart below shows a 300% increase in the amount of traffic leaving search engines and going to video sites in the past year. Clearly optimizing your videos for search is just as important as getting your videos up on the web. If you can, come to the session and find out what Google and Metacafe have to say about this topic.

Gossip Blog Traffic Spikes as Paris Hilton Goes to Jail

2007-06-13T02:45:53Z

Paris Hilton entered jail on June 3 for violating her probation in a drunk-driving case. In true Paris fashion, she managed to make headlines even in jail, by going home for supposed medical reasons, re-entering jail, and talking to Barbara Walters about her newfound maturity. The gossip blogs, of course were flooded with commentary, rumors, and speculation about Paris' jail stay, as was the major news media. US traffic to TMZ and Hollywood Tuna was up 60% and 85% respectively, making this the third highest traffic week in celebrity news in the past year, after Anna Nicole Smith's death and Britney Spears' lack of wardrobe malfunctions.

The gossip blogs have truly taken over celebrity news in the past year. The market share of US visits to TMZ and aptly named Perez Hilton increased more than fourfold from May 2006 to May 2007. If Perez Hilton ranked in the News & Media category, it would have been at #23 in May 2007. It's no wonder then, that Yahoo! just launched a blog-style gossip site in partnership with Access Hollywood, called omg!. It will be interesting to see how long it takes a site run by 2 media giants to eclipse a site run by a young man with pink hair. Ah, the beauty of Web 2.0.

Shopping, Search, and MySpace

2007-06-05T22:47:36Z

How have sources of traffic to Shopping and Classifieds websites changed over the past year? In May 2007, the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category received 24.95% of its upstream visits from search engines. This number increased by only 0.7% since May 2006, but the balance of search engines sending traffic has changed in favor of Google. Google was responsible for 15.55% of Shopping & Classifieds upstream visits in May 2007, an increase of 8.7% since May 2006. Google's traffic, share of search, and impact on e-commerce websites have grown in lockstep over the past year.

MySpace is another growing source of traffic for shopping websites. In May 2007, 3.15% of Shopping & Classifieds site visits originated at MySpace, an increase of 86.1% since May 2006. This increase could be attributable to several factors: 1) the sheer increase in visits to MySpace (up 67.1% from May 06 - May 07, vs. the 6.6% increase in visits to the Shopping & Classifieds category), resulting in more non-referred traffic, 2) increased retailer advertising on MySpace, 3) the Google-MySpace search deal, which may have led to more general web searching on MySpace as well more potential retail contextual ads. The leading Shopping & Classifieds websites in MySpace's downstream for the month of May largely resemble the top overall retail websites - 7 of the websites shown in the table below were also top 10 Shopping & Classifieds sites in May 2007.

Revolution Health Traffic Doubles in 4 Weeks

2007-05-31T22:05:39Z

This Wednesday AOL Founder Steve Case spoke at D5 about his new venture, Revolution Health. Revolution Health is setting out to be far more than just a health information source on the web, but it is already succeeding on that front. For the week ending May 26, 2007, Revolution Health was ranked #11 in the Health & Medical - Information category, and traffic increased by 113% since the week ending April 28, 2007, when it was ranked #23.

Like most health information sites, Revolution Health's primary source of traffic is search engines. Last week it received 49% of upstream visits from search engines, on par with the Health Information category average of 53.5%. While Google is the dominant search engine for Revolution Health, it received 16% of its search traffic from Ask for the four weeks ending May 26, 2007. The category as a whole received 8.8% of search visits from Ask in that period. It turns out that Ask is a good partner for health websites, since 2.69% of the visits leaving Ask went to Health Information sites for the week ending May 26, 2007, compared to 1.39% of visits leaving Google.

Google and FeedBurner - Strong Growth in the Blogosphere

2007-05-22T19:24:25Z

Rumors have been flying since last week that Google might acquire FeedBurner. The FeedBurner site is mainly a destination for bloggers seeking to measure their feed and blog stats, and US traffic has grown by 204% over the past year (April 2006 to April 2007). This reflects not only the growth of blogging in general, but also the increased need for analytics in the blogosphere.

Google has made some headway in the blogosphere in the past year - traffic to Google Reader has grown by 290% in the past four months (week ending 5/19/07 vs week ending 1/20/07), and Google Blog Search briefly overtook Technorati as the most visited blog search engine earlier this year. Google's recent acquisitions have reflected its interest in broadening its advertising platforms (YouTube and DoubleClick). It makes sense that Google would want to expand its advertising reach into feeds, with so many blogs already running AdSense. In addition, the fast-growing Google Reader is currently not displaying ads, and Google must have an interest in monetizing it.

Facebook Visits up 106% Since Opening Up in September

2007-05-21T16:40:23Z

Today's Hitwise press release updated April figures for social networking sites: MySpace still dominates the category with nearly 80% market share of visits to the top 20 sites. US Visits to MySpace increased by 70% from April 2006 to April 2007, while visits to Facebook were up 126% and visits to Bebo were up 184%.

Facebook opened up to accept Internet users without a school affiliation in September 2006. Previously it had been limited to those with a college or high school email address. From September 2006 to April 2007, the market share of visits to Facebook grew by 106 percent.

Beyond looking at marketing share of visits, Hitwise clickstream data can give an indication of the influence of a site. MySpace makes up the largest percentage of upstream traffic for almost all of the other social networks in the above table. One in four visits (24.9% of upstream clicks) to the 19 other top social networking sites came directly from MySpace in April 2007. Facebook accounted for a much smaller 2.85% of the upstream traffic to its 19 competitors in April, but that represented an increase of 185% compared to September 2006.

Facebook's increase in market share and increased presence in the clickstream of the other networks show that its influence is growing rapidly, and that opening up to the entire Internet audience had a positive effect. It appears that users at other social networking sites are experimenting with Facebook as an alternative site, which may help it attain critical mass among non-collegiate users.

Swimwear and Diets - The Search Correlation

2007-05-17T20:49:16Z

Swimsuit season is upon us - magazine racks are full of headlines promising not only to help us find the perfect swimsuit for our body types, but also the perfect diet and fitness plan to help us look our best on the beach. Not surprisingly, it turns out there is a seasonal correlation between 'swimwear' and 'diets.' The search term chart below shows that the lowest volume of searches for the two terms is in October, November and December. Of course, searches for 'diets' surge in January when people make their New Year's Resolutions, but 'swimwear' doesn't pick up again until March, when spring break approaches. It is odd though, given how much time it takes to loose any significant amount of weight, that the correlation between 'swimwear'' searches and 'diet' searches is timed so close. Apparently, we're shooting for immediate results, since some of the popular search terms are '3 day diet,' 'fad diets,' and 'fast weight loss diets.'

US Searchers Jaded by Record High Gas Prices

2007-05-16T18:17:11Z

Gas prices have once again reached record highs. How many times in the past few years have we heard this? The cost of filling up the tank is about 75% higher than it was two years ago. When prices first spiked in after Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, people went online to find the cheapest gas stations in the area and find out more about fuel economy, at sites like GasBuddy.com and FuelEconomy.gov. Now it seems inevitable - saving a dollar or two doesn't seem worth the cost of driving a few extra miles. Despite the astronomical cost of filling up the tank, the volume of searches for 'gas prices' and 'hybrid cars' for the week ending May 12, 2007 were respectively 92% and 82% lower than during the week ending September 3, 2005. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average US price for a gallon of regular gasoline, all formulations, was $3.07/gallon for the week of September 5, 2005, an did not surpass that level again until the week of May 14, 2007, when it was $3.10/gallon.

You can see on the chart below that with each subsequent gas price hike after September 2005, searchers were less interested in going online for information. Visits to GasBuddy.com and FuelEconomy.gov, two of the leading sites receiving traffic from those terms, showed a similar pattern. It appears that we've reached a point of apathy, and have grudgingly accepted the cost of driving.

Gmail Traffic Up 17% Since Opening Up, Still Early Adopter Appeal

2007-05-10T22:01:44Z

On February 14, 2007 Google's Gmail opened up access to anyone worldwide. Previously Gmail, which is still in beta, was only available by invitation from another Gmail user. The market share of US visits to Gmail increased by 17% from February 2007 to April 2007, and was up 30% year over year, from April 2006 to April 2007. Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are still by far the dominant web-based email services: their market share of visits was respectively 13x and 6x greater than Gmail in April 2007.

Users of Gmail are a different breed than the average Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail users, which closely resemble the online population in terms of age and socioeconomic status. Gmail users are much more likely to be young, high income, and in the early adopter segments. For the four weeks ending 4/28/07, 54% of visits to Gmail were from users between 18 and 34, compared to 42% for Yahoo! Mail and 44% for Hotmail. 18% of Gmail's visits were from those with average annual household incomes between $100,000 and $149,999, compared to 15% from Hotmail and 13% for Yahoo! Mail.

Claritas PRIZM NE social group data shows Gmail's strength in what are typically early adopter groups, like Urban Uptown (U1), Elite Suburbs (S1) and the Affluentials (S2).

Gmail users are also more likely to be Facebook users - 3.7% of Gmail's downstream went to Facebook in April 2007, compared to 2.2% for Hotmail and 1.2% for Yahoo! Mail. Expect Gmail's scope to broaden as its users continue to evangelize the product.

Yahoo! Auctions Closing, Ebay at 94% Share of Category

2007-05-08T17:47:19Z

Yahoo! Auctions is closing as of June 16, 2007. It comes with little surprise given Yahoo's advertising relationship with eBay, and eBay's massive dominance of the Auction category. eBay websites (including eBay, eBay Motors and eBay UK and Canada) accounted for more than 94% of visits the Auctions category for the week ending May 5, 2007. Yahoo! Auctions came in at #10, with only 0.19% of the Auctions category.

EBay is the largest e-commerce site in the downstream for Yahoo! Search, at 1.34% of Yahoo! Search's total downstream for the week ending May 5, 2007. In comparison, Yahoo! Auctions accounted for only 0.01% of the traffic leaving Yahoo! Search in that period.

US News and Media Report: Impact of Video, Google, and Blogs

2007-05-01T15:21:02Z

Today we released the Hitwise US News and Media Report, which examines trends in online news consumption over the past year. One of the most striking trends over the past year has been the increase in traffic from News & Media websites to video websites. The share of traffic leaving News and Media websites and going directly to Entertainment - Multimedia websites increased by 196% from April 2006 to March 2007. Events which involved user-generated video,
such as the death of Steve Irwin and the execution of Saddam Hussein, served to drive the increase in traffic between News and Media and Multimedia websites. The report details the impact of those two events as well as the videotaped incident involving former Senator George Allen.

News aggregators (such as Yahoo! News, Google News and Drudge Report), search engines and portals have long been the leading sources of traffic for news websites. Search engines, particularly Google, have grown in importance as sources of traffic for Broadcast Media and Print category websites. Print news websites received 29.7% more traffic from Google in March 2007 than in March 2006, and Broadcast Media sites received 35.9% more traffic from Google in the same time period. The report further examines other sources of traffic, but does not include this chart, which illustrates Google's growing impact on these categories.

The past year has seen significant growth in traffic to celebrity gossip blogs. PerezHilton.com was one of the most visited gossip blogs, increasing in market share of visits by 621% from March 2006 to March 2007. Traffic to the top 20 gossip blogs, as shown on the chart below, increased significantly due to events involving Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. More information on these sites, including demographics, can be found in the report.

With News and Media sites receiving 17% more traffic from search engines in March 2007 versus March 2006, search engines are now more likely to be the first step for Internet users in their search for information about breaking events. Relevant results from video sites and blogs now appear high in search results, thus exposing new users to these non-traditional sources of news and spurring the growth in online video consumption.

Virtual Worlds Ranking - Runescape #1

2007-04-30T17:34:08Z

Virtual worlds for children and teens have been growing in popularity recently: the market share of visits to a group of seven children's and teens' virtual worlds (sites shown below) has grown by 68% in the past year. (week ending 4/28/07 vs. week ending 4/29/06). Runescape is by far the #1 site, with 44% of visits to the category.

Webkinz, Club Penguin and Stardoll have been the fast movers over the past year. When comparing the weeks ending 4/29/06 and 4/28/07, the market share of visits to Webkinz was up 1141%, Club Penquin up 545%, and Stardoll up 275%. You can see on the chart below that visits to most of these sites surge when school is out: summer vacation, Thanksgiving, Christmas break, and most recently, spring break. Average session times can be very long, with the average visit to GaiaOnline lasting more than 44 minutes, Neopets at 35 minutes and Stardoll at 26 minutes. A few weeks ago I saw presentations from Habbo and Stardoll at the Millennials Conference. Habbo has a very large user base in Europe, and both sites are finding creative ways to partner with advertisers in-game. Expect a lot more growth in this area.