Politics, Women’s Internet Sites Fastest Growing in 2007
Websites focused on politics and on women’s communities were the fastest growing in the U.S. in 2007, according to comScore’s Internet Review of the Year.
The top-gaining site categories in 2007 reflected trends in both the online and offline worlds, comScore said. “The politics category grabbed the top position, gaining 35%, as the 2008 presidential election and primary season kicked into high gear. Women’s community sites also jumped 35%, as the top two properties in the category, Glam Media and iVillage.com, saw strong growth.”
With the ever-increasing coverage of celebrity news, from Britney Spears’ meltdowns to Anna Nicole Smith’s death, entertainment news sites jumped 32%. Online classifieds had a strong 2007 growing 31% versus year ago, as it continued to impinge on traditional news media’s classified revenues.
According to comScore, several of the top-gaining properties last year were driven by the acquisition of Web entities:
- Everyday Health gained 349% driven by its acquisition of several web sites and the addition of Drugs.com to their network.
- Women’s category leader, Glam Media, grew 213% during the year, due in large part to the addition of several new entities, including Quality Health Network, MyYearbook.com, and LifeScript.com, among others.
- Yellow Book Network grew 137% to 10.4 million visitors, as visitation to Yellowbook.com Sites tripled (up 207% to 4.6 million visitors) and one new entity was added to the property.
- iVillage.com: The Women’s Network gained 27% with the addition of Sugar Publishing, MakeoverSolutions.com, and iWin.com, among others.
- Demand Media added numerous entities under its Demand Media Knowledge and Demand Media Games media titles, which contributed to its 149% growth.
- OfficeMax’s dramatic 199% gain was driven primarily by a December 2007 surge in visitation to its popular viral holiday greetings site ElfYourself.com.
Social networking giant Facebook.com reaped the benefits of opening registration to all users, jumping 81% versus December 2006 to 34.7 million visitors in December 2007. Wikipedia Sites gained 34% to reach nearly 52 million visitors, continuing its reign as the Web’s most popular reference hub. Leading classified site Craigslist.org jumped 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors, while AT&T grew 27% to 30.2 million visitors boosted by its exclusive deal with Apple as carrier for the iPhone.
In 2007, searches at the five major core search engines increased 15 % to 9.6 billion searches. Google Sites again dominated the rankings, with 5.6 billion searches in December 2007, up more than 30% from the previous year. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 2.2 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (940 million), Time Warner Network (442 million), and Ask Network (415 million).
More than 113 billion core searches were conducted in the U.S. during all of 2007, with Google Sites accounting for nearly 64 billion, representing a 56% share of the market.
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