Every time I’ve been trying to decide on a new place to go with friends recently, someone has inevitably said, “Check it out on Yelp,” but rarely has anyone suggested that we use Citysearch too. This sentiment seems to be reflected in the web traffic, with the perennial leader in local restaurant/entertainment reviews no longer alone at the top.

Through the end of last year Citysearch held a significant lead, but Yelp has closed the Unique Visitors gap in early ‘09 and already has Citysearch beaten out in several key engagement metrics.

Visitors to Yelp stay longer, view more content and come back more often - sounds like a recipe for success. We’ll keep an eye on this an see if Yelp can ride their dominant engagement to the UV lead in the coming months.

Earlier this month, Compete reported that Facebook overtook MySpace in Unique Visitors trafficking to the site:

Sure, this was a symbolic takeover, but it should have come as no surprise to anyone closely monitoring the two social giants over the past year.

Using a few different Compete PRO Site Analytics reports, I drilled down to take a closer look at trended traffic to understand the key metrics around Facebook’s rise to power in the social media arena.

The First Blow: October 2007 - Stickiness

While Unique Visitor data is certainly newsworthy, given Social Media’s value proposition to advertisers from an engagement perspective, the stickiness metrics are arguably more important than high level site traffic alone. Looking at historical engagement data, I rolled back the clock to October 2007, where we see Facebook eclipsing MySpace in the number of pages per visit for a visitor. This would prove to be the first of many battles won by Facebook along the way.

Round 2: Reach

Examining Daily Reach (people visiting a site on a given day as a percentage of all internet users on that day) over the past 6 months, we see that on January 4th, Facebook overtook MySpace in terms of Reach, surging forward in February to achieve a remarkable 15% (and climbing) Reach vs. 11% for MySpace.

Round 3: Attention

In terms of time spent, Monthly Attention (percentage of time spent on a site as a percentage of total time spent online) illustrates Facebook’s robust growth over the last year. In early 2008, approximately 7% of all time spent online was on MySpace (vs. 1.5% for Facebook), but as the year rolled along, Facebook gained more and more attention, eventually overtaking MySpace in October. As of January 2009, 5% of all time spent online was on Facebook, more than double MySpace.

The Knockout Punch?: Average Stay

If you’re MySpace, the graph below certainly stings – in the past two years, average stay for a visitor to the site has dropped from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. In the meantime, Facebook has steadily upped this number, leaving its rival in the dust. As of January 2009, Facebook kept visitors engaged on site over 7 minutes longer on average than MySpace, with the average stay still on the rise.

What will the rest of 2009 bring for both of these sites? The Compete team will continue to track the story going forward, but in the meantime, get in on the action yourself on compete.com.

Coke and Pepsi have been locked in battle on many fronts for decades and the Super Bowl goes a long way in deciding which of the two has the upper hand. Both had success with memorable ads in 2008; Pepsi’s Justin Timberlake ad and Coke’s Parade Balloons (as a Patriots fan, the ads are the only part of that game I want to remember).

Each company had three commercials during this year’s Super Bowl, leading to a predictable spike in site traffic on the day of the game. Coke managed to keep that momentum going through to Monday, whereas Pepsi saw a steep drop.

But things were not all bad for Pepsi. Unlike Coke, which did not include any references to their online channels in the ads, Pepsi pushed their new refresheverything.com site in two of their three commercials and the graph looks quite a bit different with it included. Though the site wasn’t started solely for the Super Bowl (it began with a campaign to voice your concerns in a video-letter to the President and got a boost from its Facebook page), the massive exposure from the game helped maintain its momentum and keep the daily Reach numbers high and trending upwards.

One of Coke’s ads featured people in public being viewed as animated characters, reminiscent of online avatars and gaming, yet they failed to build on that association by driving viewers online. Instead it seems that Pepsi seized the opportunity to further engage consumers with their new site at a time when integrated cross-channel marketing is more important than ever.

Through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we heard a lot about the phenomenal popularity of the Nintendo Wii this holiday season. But are shoppers also showing interest in the smaller cousins of the consoles: portable gaming systems? And who is winning that battle for consumer interest?

Sony PlayStation and Nintendo are the major players in this market - with the PSP and the DS, respectively. To get a read on how online interest in these two brands shaped up in 2008, I looked at portable gaming interest in 2008 on two major consumer electronics retailers’ websites, Best Buy and Circuit City. Specifically, I tracked hardware and software for the PSP and DS and other legacy devices by these companies.

• The Nintendo portable devices have consistently generated more traffic than PlayStation across these two retailers’ sites.
• Interest in the PSP has been slipping on these sites. More than twice as many people looked at the Nintendo portable gaming products than the PSP last month.

Although this data is taken from just two (albeit large) retailers, the relative popularity of the Nintendo products is worth considering. Despite recent updates to the PlayStation product and its ability to play movies as well as games, it can’t seem to edge out the DS in terms of interest or sales. In October, Sony released a new iteration of their product, the PSP 3000, but most of the media interest that month was focused the new Nintendo DSi, despite its 2009 release date. Sales figures tell an even more dramatic story. According to NPD, the Nintendo DS broke U.S. hardware sales records, moving 1.56 million units in November alone. In the same period, the PSP sold 421,000 units.

So why is the DS outperforming the PSP? Available game titles and brand loyalty are probably factors, but that doesn’t completely explain such a large gap in both online interest and sales.

Part of the explanation may be in the appeal of the DS to new audiences of so-called “non-traditional” or “casual” gamers,which seems to be part of Nintendo’s DS marketing strategy. There have been several efforts to expand the market for the device, like adding games like Brain Age for more mature audiences and partnering with with the online handbag rental company From Bags to Riches to appeal to women.

This philosophy is also apparent on Nintendo’s site. When this post was written, the main page for the DS featured pictures of four female celebrities with the text, “See Who’s Playing Nintendo DS! America, Carrie, Liv and Lisa play, do you?”. Clicking on the image takes you to a microsite called iplayforme.com with stories and videos about how women use the device. I couldn’t find anything comparable on the PlayStation site for any particular PSP audience.

Would marketing to “non-traditional” player segments help the PSP in 2009? We’ll wait and see, but no matter how the PSP is marketed, overcoming the popularity and momentum of the DS will be an uphill battle.

It’s hard these days to be a homeowner. The housing-turned-credit crisis has sharply lowered home values across the country, and the proposed solutions have focused more on major industry players than on deed holders. This week, the New York Times reports that Bernanke’s newest innovation is to lower mortgage rates to a level last seen around the time JFK was sworn in – but it would not apply to current residents looking to refinance. Yes, it’s a bleak time for homeowners, and for the businesses that depend on them. As a bellwether of the industry at large, both Home Depot and Lowes are underperforming their annual trend of site traffic from last year.

Even though absolute volume of visitors to each site is greater than last year, a 4-month comparison of month-to-month changes shows negative movement for both home improvement giants when last year that movement was better, if not positive. This trend suggests fewer homeowners are able to shop for home improvement products, let alone spend money toward them. In July, those items were more geared to summer amenities such as dehumidifier, air conditioner and ceiling fans; in October, the products of the season were warmer: insulation, fireplace and heaters.

The site conversion data supports this case. Total transactions on HomeDepot.com and Lowes.com are down from October last year, by 28% and 37% respectively.

An assessment of month-over-month change tells a worse story: last October, each site almost doubled the number of transactions from September; this October, both Home Depot and Lowes saw that number dip. As the housing market declines, it will become increasingly difficult to turn around sales for these home-focused companies. And while they will likely outlast the economic downturn, it is uncertain how much time that will take.

I recently created my first photo book online as a holiday gift. Judging by the slow speed of the site I was on, I wasn’t alone! In fact, traffic to photo service sites Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish and MyPublisher each rose in November. Snapfish experienced the biggest gain with a whopping 40% increase to a record 4.725 million people. And, only Snapfish enjoyed a year-over-year increase in traffic (up 25.7% from last November).

What made Snapfish so popular, particularly against its close rival Shutterfly? A quick look at the top referring sites to Shutterfly and Snapfish provided a big hint.

• Nearly 4% of all traffic referred to Snapfish.com in November came from Oprah.com, a 29,475 percent increase in referral share from the prior month.
• A quick check revealed that Oprah announced a credit for her viewers to receive a free 20 page 8×11 custom photo book through Snapfish.com during November (using an online coupon)
• In all, Snapfish.com had the advantage compared with Shutterfly.com in 9 of the top 15 referring sites

So, what’s next for these rivals in competing for consumers’ attention this holiday season? Consider this:

Snapfish: Focus on retention and greater share of wallet. The Oprah promotion clearly drove viewers to Snapfish. The question now is, will they return to make other paid purchases? And, can Snapfish convert these Oprah viewers into loyal customers? Watch to see if November’s surge in traffic is a one-time windfall or is sustained. If the site’s Daily Reach is a harbinger, it may signal that the hard work is just beginning.

Shutterfly: Evaluate your paid search program. Shutterfly received an average 32% of its search engine referrals from paid ads compared with Snapfish’s 25%. On the one hand, Shutterfly has 9% more overall search referrals than its rival to show for its spending. And non-branded search terms “photo book” and “photo cards” are among the top 10 keywords driving traffic to Shutterfly. But overall traffic still lags Snapfish. And, what do these searchers do when they get to the site? How does this compare with what happens at Snapfish? Are searchers more or less likely to purchase online compared to rivals? Benchmarking against competitors could provide valuable competitive information.