UKOM Data Report: May 2010

NIELSEN GLOBAL DATA PROCESSING PROBLEM: Data for the below report did not meet quality standards set by UKOM, and should be sourced as “Nielsen NetView” not “UKOM APS”. The affected MediaTel UKOM Data Reports, found in Newsline, dates from February to October 2010.

Nielsen and UKOM have rectified this fault and data has been re-issued and updated in the Online database which can be found by running reports here. Please contact your Nielsen client representative if you require further information.

UKOM data for May 2010 reveals that seven of the UK’s top ten sites have seen a drop in users.

Google once again took four places in the top ten, with the Google brand staying put in the top position, despite losing 1.4 million users (4% of its actual audience). YouTube was the only one of Google’s properties to actually increase its audience over the month, moving one space into 9th place.

The BBC brand saw the biggest rise in the top ten, up 3.5% and pushing past Yahoo! into 5th position.

Microsoft fell two places, losing just under 5% of its unique audience along the way.

Much like the overall top ten websites, the list of the most popular search engines has remained static since January, cementing the notion of the search market as highly impenetrable. Google Search is still at the top but shed almost 1 million users over the month, the biggest actual change. ‘Decision engine’ Bing and plain old search engine Yahoo! Search both dropped a place in May, losing 5.7% and 2.7% of users respectively.

Ask.com managed to gain audience in May, with a 7.3% increase helping it shoot up two places to become the 3rd most popular search tool in the UK. Aggregated engine My Web Search saw the biggest loss in percentage terms – down 8.4% – but managed to remain the 10th most popular search engine.

The YouTube brand and homepage take 1st and 2nd place in the video-on-demand rankings for a second time, with both sites seeing a rise over April. 4oD gained a further 43,000 users, sending the Channel 4 service up a place and knocking ITV Player into 7th, with a 5.2% loss for the ITV catch-up service.

Metacafe was up one place on April’s figures to 9th, with Bing Video dropping into 10th place in the video rankings. Yahoo! Video fell out of the top ten with an overall placing of 1123rd. Dailymotion saw the sharpest rise in viewers, with 18.7% growth over the month bringing it up 104 places to an overall ranking of 521st place.

The majority of the most popular social networking sites saw a drop in traffic, most notably Friends Reunited and Bebo. Friends Reunited, formerly owned by ITV, shed 22% of its users during May – the biggest loss in the top ten. Bebo lost 293,000 users but remained the 9th most popular networking site.

Facebook remains the number one destination for digital socialising, with 25 million internet users in the UK, followed by Blogger, which gained 187,000 users over the month.

The top ten news websites were led by BBC News, which witnessed a jump in traffic as nearly 1.5 million extra users logged on in May. BBC Homepage also gained users over the month with a 6.8% rise.

User numbers for Times Online were down 8.2% in May, although it remained in 6th place. New look Times and Sunday Times sites were launched on 25 May, ahead of the title moving behind an online paywall, which was erected last week.

Telegraph and Guardian.co.uk both jumped up one place with respective increases of 4% and 9%. After an impressive 14% rise in April, Google News has seen its fortunes change slightly with an 8.5% drop in May resulting in a fall to 10th place.

UKOM APS data for over 10,000 websites is available in the Online database. Demographic data is available for the top 2,000 websites. Users can download summary pdfs for every site.