Compete Ranking of Top 50 Web Sites for January 2011 Shows Big Chill for Online Retailers

in Compete PRO™ Our Products by Jared DeLuca — March 5, 2011 at 3:30 pm | 3 comments

User Visits to Top Retailer Sites Quickly Return to Pre-Holiday Levels; Bing.com Traffic Reached Its All-Time High, Has Doubled Since January 2010

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – March 1, 2011) –  Compete, a Kantar Media company, today released its ranking of the top 50 web sites for January 2011. Compete’s data clearly shows that traffic to top online retail sites decreased significantly in January, including Walmart.com (-32.64 percent), Target.com (-32.15 percent), Bestbuy.com (-36.55 percent) and Amazon.com (-15.29 percent). While these declines in unique visitors (UV) are significant when compared to December, they actually mark a return to pre-holiday levels for most sites, reflecting a seasonality that online retailers — as well as all online brands — can consult for future online media planning and strategy.

“As we generate data each month, it’s easy to fixate on monthly anomalies, but sometimes the data reveals consistent longitudinal trends,” said Compete managing director, Retail and Consumer Products, Matt Pace. “The seasonality for online retailers is one of those interesting curves highlighted by our data, and it alone warrants deeper analysis by brands, advertisers and other industry watchers.”

Other noteworthy data points from the January data include:

• Bing.com grew nearly 4 percent in January to reach its highest number of UVs to date (109.36 percent year-over-year), even during a month when most sites were trending downward.
• Livingsocial.com has taken a bite out of Groupon.com’s marketshare in the group shopping arena, gaining 43.87 percent in UVs for the month and 924.71 percent for the year. Comparatively, Groupon.com UVs during January fell 5.9 percent for the month yet had a 761.45 percent year-over-year rise.
• New Year’s resolutions spurred significant monthly growth for diet and fitness sites such as Weightwatchers.com (up 114.67 percent), Nutrisystem.com (up 201.86 percent), Livestrong.com (up 45.26 percent) and 24hourfitness.com (up 39.95 percent).
• Daily traffic insights — January daily traffic for the largest retail sites also declined on a day-to-day comparison basis versus December 2010, but stark differences across sites revealed divergent post-holiday marketing strategies. For instance, Target.com, Bestbuy.com and Amazon.com all showed the highest traffic on Sundays, while Walmart.com peaks occurred on Saturdays, reflecting Walmart.com’s contrarian approach to customer acquisition spending in January.

Information regarding top 50 web sites is drawn from the Compete PRO Enterprise edition on Compete.com. For more information on the enterprise offering, please contact Gavin Blackmore at gblackmore@compete.com.

Rank	Domain	Unique Visitors	Monthly Change
1	google.com	145143527	-0.0322
2	yahoo.com	131868348	-0.0371
3	facebook.com	127510914	-0.0488
4	youtube.com	111794719	-0.0462
5	bing.com	82995659	0.0391
6	wikipedia.org	80510536	0.0089
7	amazon.com	78383180	-0.1529
8	live.com	72851697	-0.028
9	msn.com	72052581	-0.0343
10	blogspot.com	62850677	0.0068
11	ebay.com	62251847	-0.1063
12	microsoft.com	59273045	-0.0351
13	ask.com	58198506	-0.0274
14	craigslist.org	56014351	0.0192
15	go.com	49969811	-0.0251
16	about.com	49447407	0.0103
17	aol.com	46882123	-0.0519
18	walmart.com	45298002	-0.3264
19	myspace.com	43601320	-0.0738
20	ehow.com	43444044	0.1085
21	answers.com	42340763	0.049
22	weather.com	34629374	0.0095
23	target.com	34327084	-0.3215
24	adobe.com	33851172	-0.0485
25	apple.com	33725585	-0.1686
26	mapquest.com	32508147	-0.0302
27	wordpress.com	32251984	0.0258
28	netflix.com	30891597	0.1315
29	paypal.com	30135411	-0.1082
30	twitter.com	27985892	0.0604
31	imdb.com	27165268	0.0174
32	att.com	25515084	-0.0549
33	chase.com	25350016	-0.0539
34	cnn.com	25006285	0.0353
35	bankofamerica.com	23999118	-0.06
36	bestbuy.com	23326840	-0.3655
37	photobucket.com	21585710	-0.0632
38	flickr.com	20658756	0.0195
39	verizonwireless.com	20008951	-0.0111
40	intuit.com	19694901	2.5971
41	bizrate.com	19298315	-0.151
42	cnet.com	19247637	-0.051
43	overstock.com	19001684	-0.1163
44	irs.gov	18508589	2.1252
45	jcpenney.com	18434735	-0.2973
46	local.com	17979711	-0.0028
47	sears.com	17913756	-0.3573
48	comcast.com	17206245	-0.0006
49	yellowpages.com	17129641	0.0233
50	reference.com	17099791	0.1143

About Compete
Compete, a Kantar Media company, helps the world’s top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Leading advertisers, agencies and publishers rely on Compete’s products and services to create engaging online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns. Compete’s online panel — the largest in the industry — makes the web as ingrained in marketing as it is in people’s lives. Compete is located in Boston, MA, with offices throughout the U.S. For more information, please visit http://www.compete.com/.

About Kantar Media
Established in more than 50 countries, Kantar Media helps clients master the world’s multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, internet, cinema, mobile, social media, and outdoor worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors — Intelligence, Audiences, TGI and Custom. Kantar Media companies also include Compete, Cymfony and SRDS. Drawing upon the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insight to more than 22,000 customers worldwide. www.KantarMediaNA.com/.

About Jared DeLuca: Jared DeLuca is currently the Online Marketing Coordinator for Compete.com. Jared is a recent graduate of Northeastern University achieving his B.A. in Communication Studies. If you like what you read, you can follow him on Twitter @delucajared.

Tags: data google Groupon january LivingSocial retail top 50