Travel and Career-Related Sites Fastest-Growing in U.K.

Unique visitors to travel, career, tax, and real estate sites in the U.K. increased from December ‘07 to January ‘08 , reports comScore, citing its World Metrix audience measurement service (via MarketingCharts).

The January data, below, also show Google Sites, Microsoft Sites, and eBay to be U.K. internet properties with the most traffic.

Top 25 Properties

Among the findings:

• Google Sites, at 33.254 million total unique visitors, had a strong lead over No. 2-ranked Microsoft, at 29.633 million.
• Third with 28.102 million visitors was eBay, followed by Yahoo Sites with 21.363 million.
• Lycos Europe Sites jumped five places to reach the No. 10 position, with 11.886 million visitors.
• Both Facebook and U.K. social networking site Bebo moved up one notch - to 9th and 13th place, respectively.

See table of top 25 properties.

Top 10 Gaining Site Categories

Among the highlights:

• Traffic to car rental sites increased 80 percent from Dec. ‘07 to Jan. ‘08.
• Career resources and job search sites were both up 67 percent.
• Travel-related sites, such as hotels/resorts (54 percent), airlines (46 percent) and online travel agents (43 percent) also increased significantly.

See table of Top 10 gaining categories.

Top 10 Gaining Properties

• In the travel category, two websites had more than 100 percent growth in traffic: First Choice Holiday PLC (140 percent), TUI Group (122 percent).
• British Airways was fourth, increasing to 4.577 million unique visitors (from 3.564 million).
• Entering the Top 20 Properties list for the first time, Moneysupermarket.com grew 79 percent, to 6.6 million visitors.

View table of Top 10 gaining properties.

About the data: comScore ranked top properties by total unique visitors from home and work locations, using information gathered from its World Metrix service. Those findings exclude traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.