comScore Networks, a digital measuring firm has released a report on the top Web properties for December, ranked by unique visitors and who the biggest gainers were for 2006.
Worldwide Internet usage increased 10 percent from December 2005 to December 2006. In the search category the top three sites that have the largest global audience grew 9 percent. Google the number two site worldwide increased visitors to their site by 13 percent.
“Google’s popularity has been driven in part by its international appeal as well as the rapid uptake of some of Google’s applications beyond traditional Web search,” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe. “Examples include the 40-percent year-over-year growth in visitors to Google Image Search, the 71-percent growth in visitors to Gmail, and the 62-percent growth in visitors to Google Maps.”
Both Microsoft and Yahoo sites grew 5 percent worldwide in 2006. Microsoft sites held the top position with Yahoo ranking third.
Multimedia was the leader in the top-gaining category in 2006 growing 37 percent followed by Community, which grew 33 percent. YouTube was partly responsible for the growth in the multimedia category. The video sharing site grew 1,972 percent in 2006 and had 120 million visitors.
The growth in the community category was due in part to social networking site, MySpace and Blogger. MySpace grew 159 percent in 2006 and had 90 million visitors globally. Blogger grew 90 percent and had 93 million visitors worldwide.
Here are the top Web properties for December 2006.
Web PropertiesTotal Unique Visitors Web Properties
Dec-06 (000)———————————–Worldwide Total (Age 15+)740,984Microsoft Sites508,659Google Sites494,170Yahoo! Sites476,761Time Warner Network260,387eBay251,423Wikipedia Sites164,675Amazon Sites151,033Fox Interactive Media135,730CNET Networks114,940Ask Network113,881Apple Computer, Inc.111,131Adobe Sites100,421Lycos, Inc.83,724Viacom Digital76,171New York Times Digital68,010* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
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