Americans Flood Tax Sites as Season Begins; Travel and Careers in Focus at Start of New Year
RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released its monthly analysis of U.S. web activity at the top online properties for January 2011 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Americans’ Web activity in January saw gains in a few main content categories: Taxes, Travel and Career Resources. Many Americans wasted no time in beginning their annual tax filing duties, as the number of visitors to Tax sites surged. Travel and careers were both major topics of Internet browsing in January, collectively accounting for seven of the top gaining categories for the month.
Early Filers Flock to Tax Sites
Tax sites experienced a strong surge of activity in January as tax prep season officially commenced. The category attracted 26.8 million visitors in January, representing a 345-percent increase from December. Categories leaders such as TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxACT all achieved triple-digit gains during the month.
American Travel Plans Take Shape
Several Travel subcategories saw a spike in activity during the month, including Transactions, Ground/Cruise, Online Travel Agents and Travel Information. The overall category drew 114.6 million Americans, representing the category’s highest reach on record at 54 percent. Travel Transactions sites achieved the strongest gains, up 29 percent to 3.5 million visitors. TravelPN.com led the category with 781,000 unique visitors (up 26 percent), followed by WWTE.com with 551,000 visitors (up 106 percent), OneTime.com with 508,000 (up 39 percent) and Viator.com with 497,000 (up 31 percent).
Ground/Cruise sites also experienced significant growth, up 20 percent to 13.3 million unique visitors. Amtrak.com was the category leader with 2.2 million visitors, followed closely by Carnival Cruise Lines with 2.1 million visitors (up 113 percent). FirstGroup plc ranked third in the category with 1.7 million visitors, while VacationsToGo.com Sites and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. saw 1.5 million visitors (up 67 percent and 36 percent, respectively).
New Year, New Career
Many Americans started the off the new year looking for Career Services and Development resources, with more than 80.2 million people visiting the category in January. The Job Search subcategory saw the most prominent growth at 24 percent, ranking third among top gaining categories for January. 27.2 million Americans visited a Job Search site during the month, with Indeed.com Job Search taking the top spot with 11.6 million visitors (up 20 percent). CareerBuilder.com Job Search drew 10.9 million visitors (up 27 percent), followed by Monster.com Job Search with 10.0 million visitors (up 35 percent), HotJobs Job Search with 5.0 million visitors (up 25 percent) and SimplyHired.com Job Search with 4.9 million visitors (up 29 percent).
The Career Resources subcategory displayed a slightly shuffled version of the top sites at the property level. Monster, Inc. ranked #1 with 25.5 million visitors in January (up 13 percent), followed by CareerBuilder LLC with 25.1 million visitors (up 29 percent), Indeed with 13.2 million (up 20 percent) and SimplyHired, Inc. with 5.6 million (up 28 percent).
Top 50 Properties
Yahoo! Sites ranked as the #1 property in January with 178.9 million visitors, followed by Google Sites with 178.5 million and Microsoft Sites with 176.8 million. Tribune Interactive climbed 9 positions to rank as the #32 property overall with 31.8 million visitors. LinkedIn.com was not far behind at #36 after jumping 11 positions in the ranking with 29.8 million visitors. Sites that newly appeared on the top 50 ranking in January included Huffington Post (#41), Netflix.com (#44), Yelp.com (#45), Monster, Inc. (#47) and Bank of America (#48).
Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking
Google Ad Network led the January Ad Focus ranking with a reach of 93.1 percent of Americans online, followed by Yahoo! Network Plus with an 85.5-percent reach, AOL Advertising with 85.0 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 84.5 percent. Facebook.com crossed into the top 10 for the first time in January with a 72.3-percent reach.
Table 1
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comScore Top 10 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors* (U.S.)
January 2011 vs. December 2010
Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix .
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Dec-10 Jan-11 % Change Rank by Unique Visitors
Total Internet : Total Audience 211,860 211,621 0 N/A
ED.GOV 5,220 8,433 62 191
ABC Television 6,365 9,715 53 167
Travelocity 5,887 8,279 41 198
Trulia Network 5,581 7,565 36 210
Bankrate.com Sites 4,802 6,465 35 244
CSMonitor.com 4,648 6,235 34 250
Dominion Enterprises 8,263 11,072 34 145
VNU e-Media Websites 5,609 7,381 32 213
CandyStand.com 4,966 6,527 31 240
Reuters Sites 8,310 10,759 29 149
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*Ranking based on the top 250 properties in January 2011. Excludes entities whose growth was primarily due to implementation of Media Metrix 360 unified digital audience measurement.
Table 2
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comScore Top 10 Gaining Site Categories by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.)
January 2011 vs. December 2010
Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix .
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Dec-10 Jan-11 % Change
Total Internet : Total Audience 211,860 211,621 0
Business/Finance – Taxes 6,016 26,790 345
Travel – Transactions 2,734 3,526 29
Career Services and Development 21,931 27,244 24
– Job Search
Travel – Ground/Cruise 11,083 13,338 20
Real Estate 55,521 65,737 18
Career Services and Development 47,047 55,066 17
– Career Resources
Travel – Online Travel Agents 33,760 38,586 14
Travel – Information 49,491 56,244 14
Career Services and Development 12,180 13,828 14
– Training and Education
Business to Business 48,662 55,234 14
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Please follow this link to view tables 3 and 4: http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/2/comScore_Media_Metrix_Ranks_Top_50_U.S._Web_Properties_for_January_2011
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 business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.
