comScore Releases U.S. Internet Year in Review

comScore has issued a report highlighting the major trends in U.S. internet activity in 2007, including top gaining properties and site categories, and core search market growth.

Top internet brands, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist, were among the winners of 2007, writes MarketingCharts, citing comScore’s data.

Top-Gaining Properties in 2007

A study of the growth in visitors among the top 100 U.S. internet properties reveals that 2007 was a strong year for several of the largest properties:

• Social-networking giant Facebook.com reaped the benefits of opening registration to all users, jumping 81 percent versus December 2006 to 34.7 million visitors in December 2007.
• Wikipedia Sites gained 34 percent to reach nearly 52 million visitors, continuing its reign as the Web’s most popular reference hub.
• Leading classifieds site Craigslist.org jumped 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors.
• AT&T grew 27 percent to 30.2 million visitors boosted by its exclusive deal with Apple as carrier for the iPhone.
• Yellow Book Network jumped an impressive 137 percent to 10.4 million visitors.

(See table of top 20 gaining properties.)

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 to 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 ElfYourself.com.

Top-Gaining Site Categories

The top-gaining site categories in 2007 (see table) 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 - continuing to impinge on traditional news media’s classified revenues.

Core Search Query Growth in 2007

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.

In Dec. 2007, searches at the five major core search engines increased 15 percent from Dec. 2006 to 9.6 billion searches. (See table.)

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).