Global Net Traffic Jan07

In January 2007, Microsoft sites remained the most trafficked site in terms of unique visitors globally while Google and Yahoo remained close second and third. Most of the Microsoft sites’ strength came from international markets as domestic UVs declined slightly YoY, and Microsoft Sites were the third most trafficked domestic site. The top 10 ranking is unchanged in January 2007 from December 2006. YoY, Fox Interactive Media continued to be the fastest growth site YoY as its traffic grew more than 4x compared to the year ago period, boosted by its MySpace property. Wikipedia sites also exhibited tremendous growth both YoY and sequentially in the recent months, to reach 189 million monthly UV in January 2007. Should this trend continue, Wikipedia is on track to become top 5 most trafficked sites globally in the next couple months.

Looking at Page Views, Google moved up and became the top site since December 2006 with YoY growth at 67%, while Yahoo Sites remained a strong number 2 despite the negative impact from AJAX. Fox Interactive Media remained the leader in PV growth rate with the contribution from MySpace, which contributed ~97-98% of total PVs. One noteworthy change among the top 10 sites was the rapid ramp-up recently at Facebook.com which garnered close to 14 billion PV in January 2007, a YoY growth of over 170%. Ranked 6th in terms of PVs is the NHN Corporation which is a Korean Internet company that runs the nation’s largest portal / search site www.Navor.com as well as the largest gaming platform Hangame.

In January 2007, Windows Live Space continued to be the dominant leader in the social networking category globally with monthly unique visitors at 110 million, up 22% YoY and 5% sequentially. Both Flickr.com and Facebook.com ramped up nicely in the past 6 months (both exhibited north of 100% YoY growth in January 2007) despite its ebbed flow in terms of unique visitors in the first half of 2006. MySpace.com is the second fastest growing social networking site globally on a YoY basis at 143%, but a deceleration from the 160% YoY growth level in December 2006. While HI5.com does not get tremendous traction in the domestic market, it has been growing nicely outside of the U.S. and reached 24 million UVs in January 2007. Hi5.com is a social networking site focusing mainly on established as well as the undiscovered art talents.
In January 2007, Youtube.com grew global UVs by 13x YoY to reach 134 million unique visitors, but the YoY growth marks a deceleration from the 20x level in December 2006 and 23x level in November 2006.
Thanks comScore & Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. February 2007