Facebook becomes UK’s fifth most visited website
Facebook broke into the top five most visited online properties in the UK for the first time in its history in September, reaching 18.4 million visitors and overtaking the BBC network of sites in the process.
The September figures, from web measurement firm comScore, also show that politics, business/finance and news/research categories saw an upsurge in interest.
Lloyds TSB and HBOS were amongst the strongest gaining sites in the UK, experiencing 15% and 13% increases respectively.
| Top 10 Gaining Site Categories for September 2008 by Number of UK Unique Visitors | |||
| September 2008 v August 2008, Total UK, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations* | |||
| Source: comScore World Metrix | |||
| Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) | ||
| August-08 | September-08 | % Change | |
| Total Internet: Total Audience | 35,608 | 35,980 | 1% |
| Politics | 1,494 | 1,900 | 27% |
| Business/Finance – Online Trading | 740 | 900 | 22% |
| Education | 12,800 | 15,064 | 18% |
| Genealogy | 1,911 | 2,140 | 12% |
| Government | 13,181 | 14,705 | 12% |
| Hobbies/Lifestyle – Food | 3,362 | 3,746 | 11% |
| Career Services and Development | 9,419 | 10,469 | 11% |
| Retail – Books | 11,674 | 12,915 | 11% |
| Health | 10,026 | 11,074 | 10% |
| Business/Finance – News/Research | 8,011 | 8,843 | 10% |
| *Excludes traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. | |||
| Top 25 Properties for September 2008 by Number of UK Unique Visitors* | |||
| September 2008 v August 2008, Total UK, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations** | |||
| Source: comScore World Metrix | |||
| Sep-08 Rank | Aug-08 Rank | Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) Sep – 08 |
| N/A | N/A | Total Internet: Total Audience | 35,980 |
| 1 | 1 | Google Sites | 31,769 |
| 2 | 2 | Microsoft Sites | 28,828 |
| 3 | 3 | Yahoo! Sites | 21,015 |
| 4 | 4 | eBay | 19,769 |
| 5 | 6 | 18,410 | |
| 6 | 5 | BBC Sites | 18,181 |
| 7 | 7 | AOL LLC | 16,793 |
| 8 | 9 | Wikimedia Foundation Sites | 13,641 |
| 9 | 8 | Ask Network | 13,565 |
| 10 | 10 | Amazon Sites | 11,417 |
| 11 | 12 | Apple Inc | 10,168 |
| 12 | 11 | Fox Interactive Media | 9,989 |
| 13 | 13 | Lycos Europe Sites | 9,529 |
| 14 | 14 | DMGT | 8,688 |
| 15 | 15 | CBS Corporation | 8,470 |
| 16 | 16 | Sky Sites | 7,706 |
| 17 | 27 | Glam Media*** | 6,845 |
| 18 | 19 | Tesco Stores | 6,487 |
| 19 | 17 | Home Retail Group | 6,423 |
| 20 | 18 | Yellow Book Network | 6,367 |
| 21 | 20 | News International | 6,102 |
| 22 | 24 | Adobe Sites | 5,937 |
| 23 | 30 | WordPress | 5,422 |
| 24 | 23 | Viacom Digital | 5,213 |
| 25 | 26 | The Royal Bank of Scotland | 5,181 |
| *Ranking based on the top 100 UK properties in August 2008 | |||
| **Excludes traffice from public computers such as internet cafes or mobile access from mobile phones or PDAs | |||
| ***As of September 2008 Womendsforum Glam Network has been incorporated into the Glam Media property | |||
comScore: www.comscore.com