January 2011 Top U.S. Web Brands and News Sites

As in December 2010, the same brands were featured amongst the 10 most popular online in the U.S. in January 2011 except for Wikipedia replacing Amazon (now 11th). There was also only one change to the brands featuring compared to the same period a year ago, January 2010, with Ask Search Network replacing Fox Interactive Media, whose stable of sites includes MySpace and Photobucket.

Amongst January 2011’s U.S. top 10, Wikipedia (+6.7%) and MSN (+4.2%) saw the greatest monthly increase in Unique Visitors through PCs/laptops from home and work locations.

While Facebook, by some way, had the highest average time per person, Ask Search Network saw the greatest gain in monthly time spent, with the average visitor spending just under 11 minutes, up 16.4% from December 2010. Wikipedia, Facebook and Google shared similar growth in time spent, up 6.8%, 6.6% and 6%, respectively.

Top 10 U.S. Web Brands for January 2011 (Home and Work Locations)
Rank	Brand	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)	MOM % Change in UA	MOM % Change in Time PP
1	Google	153,623	1:21:00	-0.1%	6.0%
2	Facebook	135,622	7:24:12	0.0%	6.6%
3	Yahoo!	130,854	2:20:10	-1.1%	2.1%
4	MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	121,019	1:26:39	4.2%	-0.8%
5	YouTube	103,868	1:21:54	-1.9%	-0.1%
6	Microsoft	90,221	0:41:53	-0.2%	-3.4%
7	AOL Media Network	76,173	1:58:31	0.0%	-0.2%
8	Wikipedia	65,698	0:15:31	6.7%	6.8%
9	Ask Search Network	65,454	0:10:40	0.3%	16.4%
10	Apple	63,296	1:18:48	-6.2%	-6.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company
Read as: During January 2011, 153.6 million unique U.S. people visited Google using PC/laptops from home and work locations

When looking at the ten most popular Current Events and Global News sites, each saw month-over-month growth in their audience, as is often the case between December and January. Yahoo! News was the top site in the category with 46.3 million unique U.S. visitors, up 6% from December 2010. Yahoo! was followed by CNN Digital Network (+15%) and MSNBC Digital Network (+15.7%), both with double-digit gains in visitors.

Acquired by AOL earlier in the week, The Huffington Post was the #9 news site in January drawing 13.3 million unique visitors who averaged nearly 12 minutes on the site. Huff Post’s new sister site – AOL News – ranked #4 with 22.1 million unique visitors from home/work computers.

Although the Huff Post is now part of the same stable as AOL News, there was already some overlap amongst their audiences. In January 2011, 27% of US visitors to AOL News also visited Huff Post, while 44% of visitors to Huff Post also visited AOL News in that same month.

Top 10 U.S. Current Events & Global News Sites for January 2011 (Home & Work)
Rank	Brand	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)	MOM % Change in UA	MOM % Change in Time PP
1	Yahoo! News	46,274	0:14:54	6.0%	22.5%
2	CNN Digital Network	37,008	0:22:37	15.0%	22.7%
3	MSNBC Digital Network	32,494	0:16:36	15.7%	13.4%
4	AOL News	22,060	0:14:00	3.9%	0.2%
5	Tribune Newspapers	16,929	0:10:10	21.7%	3.9%
6	Fox News Digital Network	16,652	0:19:14	16.0%	-1.8%
7	NYTimes.com	15,503	0:15:15	24.0%	8.9%
8	ABCNEWS Digital Network	14,551	0:05:55	11.2%	0.6%
9	TheHuffingtonPost.com	13,266	0:11:39	12.0%	-18.4%
10	Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division	12,763	0:18:04	20.4%	22.5%
Source: The Nielsen Company
Read as: During January 2011, 46.3 million unique U.S. people visited Yahoo! News using PC/laptops from home and work locations
Note: The “Current Events & Global News” category does not include financial news sites such as Wall Street Journal, Reuters, etc. These sites are in a separate “Finanical News & Info” category

When looking at overall computer and Internet usage, U.S. Internet users spent more time online (+10%), visited more domains (+5.3%), engaged in more sessions (+3.5%) and viewed more pages (+3.5%) during January than they did last month.

Average U.S. Internet Usage for January 2011 (Home & Work)
Metrics	Current Month	Previous Month	% Change
Sessions/Visits per Person	59	57	3.5%
Domains Visited per Person	99	94	5.3%
Web Page Views per Person	2,750	2,656	3.5%
PC Time per Person	61:27:19	55:53:03	10.0%
Duration of a Web Page viewed	0:00:58	0:00:55	3.9%
Active Digital Media Universe	197,842,270	198,595,819	-0.4%
Current Digital Media Universe Estimate	242,999,000	240,813,000	0.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company