Top Gaining Sites in January Reflect Tax Season
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comScore’s latest portrait of the top Web in January showed that tax and career sites experienced big boosts in traffic, while Facebook finished the month in the elite top 10 list of the biggest Web properties for the first time.
- Not surprisingly, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft finished the month as the top three Web properties, followed by AOL LLC, Fox Interactive Media and the Ask Network.
- Google finished the month with 151.0 million unique visitors, a slight increase from 149.0 million visitors in December. Yahoo! drew 146.1 million visitors, while Microsoft attracted 125.6 million visitors.
- eBay dropped to the seventh spot on the list, displaced by the Ask Network, while Amazon held onto its eighth spot. The Wikimedia Foundation finished the month in the ninth slot, pushing Glam Media out of the top 10, while Facebook slid into the 10th spot on the list.
- Facebook finished January with 57.2 million visitors, according to comScore. The social network saw a 4.8 percent boost from the 54.6 million visitors it had in December, when it finished 11th.
- TaxACT was the top gaining property in January, as the number of its visitors swelled 972 percent to 5.9 million, compared to 549,000 in December, reflecting the end of 2008 and the nearing tax season.
- H&R Block also benefited from those two factors as its audience grew 277 percent to 6.1 million in January, compared to 1.6 million in December.
- IRS.gov followed suit, as its audience grew 240 percent to 14.7 million visitors, while Intuit’s audience grew 163 percent to 16.2 million.
- Business/Finance – Taxes was the top gaining category, as its audience grew 176 percent to 24.7 million in January, compared to 8.9 million in December.
- Travel – Ground/Cruise followed with a 46 percent boost in its audience, finishing January with 13.0 million visitors, while Career Services & Development – Job Search experienced a 42 percent increase in its audience to 26.7 million unique visitors.
- Career Services & Development – Career Resources saw its audience grow 26 percent to 48.9 million in January, while the Retail – Computer Software category experienced a 24 percent increase in its audience, finishing January with 37.5 million visitors.
comScore indicated that the total Internet audience in January was 191.9 million, a 1 percent increase from the population of 190.7 million in December.
The top online ad network was Platform-A, which reached 174.6 million visitors, or 91 percent of the total online audience.
- The Yahoo! Network was second, reaching 164.7 million visitors, or 86 percent of the total Internet audience. ValueClick Networks reached 84 percent of the total online population.
- The Google Ad Network was fourth, reaching 83 percent of the total audience, while Traffic Marketplace was fifth, reaching 77 percent of the total Internet audience in January, displacing Specific Media, which finished seventh.
Sources:</strong
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2730
