MySpace becomes number one US website

Over takes Yahoo and Google in the visitor share

12 July 2006 0:32 GMT / By Stuart Miles

MySpace has become Americas number one website over taking Yahoo and Google in the visitor share according to tracking firm Hitwise.

The site, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp a year ago accounted for 4.46% of all US internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.

MySpace, a social networking on the Web, allows users to create virtual communities online for sharing music, photos or other interests.

MySpace captured nearly 80% of visits to online social networking sites, up from 76% in April.

However Yahoo vehemently denies the claim and gave Pocket-lint the following statement:

"The report that Hitwise released today with the headline 'MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites' is misleading. The Yahoo! network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo!’s mail.yahoo.com domain.

"When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month. In the US alone, Yahoo! attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74% of the online population; in comparison, MySpace reaches only 30% of the online population with an audience of 52 million unique visitors.

"In addition, Yahoo! has the largest share of online time spent than any other property: Yahoo! accounts for 13% of users’ online time, while MySpace has only 3.2% share in users’ online time. Yahoo! maintains its leadership position as the world’s most trafficked internet destination online, with a community of more than 500 million unique monthly visitors from around the globe."

Full tags

Software, Online, Social networking, MySpace