Twitter.com Traffic More than Doubles to Rank as Fastest-Growing Property in March
Americans Seek Financial Advice Online as Economic Concerns Persist
RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at the top online properties for March 2009 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Americans turned to the Web to plan spring and summer travel, and to manage their personal finances during the economic downturn. The month also saw the recent obsession with “tweeting” gain steam, as Twitter.com more than doubled its visitor base, ranking as the top-gaining property for the month.
“Twitter has certainly become an Internet phenomenon over the past few months, but March represented an especially big gain for the site as it added more than 5 million visitors versus the previous month,” commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “With numerous celebrities and media personalities – including Oprah – recently jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, the site shows no signs of slowing.”
Twitter Captures Fastest-Growing Property Title
After several preceding months of strong double-digit growth, traffic to Twitter.com accelerated in March, growing 131 percent to 9.3 million visitors. Fueled in part by celebrity “tweeters” and substantial mainstream media attention, the site ranked as the top-gaining property for the month. For additional analysis of Twitter’s growth in March, please visit the comScore Voices blog: http://www.comscore.com/blog/2009/04/breaking_news_and_making_news.html
Americans Seek Financial Advice Online
Many Americans sought financial advice online to help navigate the turbulent economy, resulting in a 12-percent gain at the Financial Information/Advice category. Consumer concerns about the status of their credit rating drove traffic to FreeCreditReport.com, which grew 6 percent to 6.6 million visitors and ranked as the most visited site in the category. Bankrate.com Sites, which provides rate information on various financial products such as mortgages, credit cards and money market accounts, reported a 12-percent increase to 3.9 million visitors.
Travel Sites See Gains as Visitors Plan for Summer Travel
As Americans prepared for spring travel and planned for summer vacations, several travel categories witnessed gains. Travel – Transactions led as the top-gaining category for the month, growing 18 percent to 4.5 million visitors.
The Car Rental and Airlines categories also saw double-digit gains, each growing 11 percent to 5.6 million and 29.8 million visitors, respectively. Southwest Airlines Co. led the Airlines category with 11.3 million visitors, up 20 percent from the previous month, followed by Delta Airlines with 6.5 million visitors (up 5 percent) and American Airlines with 5.8 million visitors (up 25 percent).
Top 50 Properties
Google Sites continued to lead as the most visited property in March with more than 151 million visitors, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 146 million visitors and Microsoft Sites with 122.3 million visitors. Facebook.com moved up one spot in the ranking to #9 this month with 61.2 million visitors.
Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking
Platform-A led the March Ad Focus ranking, reaching 90 percent of the 192 million Americans online. Yahoo! Network ranked second, reaching 86 percent, while Google Ad Network moved up one spot to #3 with an 84-percent reach.
TABLE 1
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comScore Top 10 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors* (U.S.)
March 2009 vs. February 2009
Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Feb-09 Mar-09 % Change Rank by
Unique
Visitors
Total Internet: Total Audience 192,187 192,173 0 N/A
Twitter.com 4,033 9,313 131 78
Grisoft 4,260 7,764 82 114
Oprah.com 2,814 4,505 60 234
Usmagazine.com 3,863 5,943 54 47
Technorati Media 11,692 16,021 37 2
MLB.com 5,069 6,860 35 75
Groupe Lagardere 4,253 5,705 34 122
Limewire.com 7,861 10,414 32 71
Universal Music Group 5,626 7,421 32 49
Nestle 3,269 4,278 31 201
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*Ranking based on the top 250 properties in March 2009.
TABLE 2
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comScore Top 10 Gaining Site Categories* by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.)
March 2009 vs. February 2009
Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Feb-09 Mar-09 % Change
Total Internet: Total Audience 192,187 192,173 0
Travel – Transactions 3,770 4,463 18
Business/Finance –
Financial Information/Advice 35,325 39,518 12
Travel – Car Rental 5,008 5,556 11
Travel – Airlines 26,922 29,818 11
Entertainment – Humor 21,441 23,446 9
Business/Finance – Banking 73,096 79,031 8
Entertainment – Radio 35,638 38,522 8
Community – Beauty/Fashion/Style 21,861 23,368 7
Health – Information 66,623 71,201 7
Directories/Resources – Classifieds 50,401 53,839 7
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For tables 3 & 4, please visit the following link: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2788
About comScore Media Metrix
comScore Media Metrix provides industry-leading Internet audience measurement services that report details of online media usage, visitor demographics and online buying power for the home, work and university audiences across local U.S. markets and across the globe. comScore Media Metrix reports are used by financial analysts, advertising agencies, publishers and marketers. comScore Media Metrix syndicated ratings are based on industry-sanctioned sampling methodologies.
About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.
