The majority of top brands in average monthly time spent per user experienced a decrease in time spent on their sites during September 2011, according to data from Nielsen. In September 2011, the average Facebook user spent 7 hours, 42 minutes and 26 seconds on the site, down more than 3 minutes from the previous month. The average Yahoo user cut time spent by over 5 minutes, down to 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 32 seconds, while AOL, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing and YouTube all experienced significant declines of about 10 minutes each. By contrast, visitors to Wikipedia spent 4.6% more time on average on the site during September 2011, and visitors to the Ask Search Network also increased their average time spent by about 10%.
For the third straight month, Facebook clearly dominated the other top US web brands in average monthly time spent per user, while the rest of the top 5 – AOL, Yahoo, Google, and MSN/WindowsLive/Bing – also retained their rankings from August.
Audience Numbers Also Fall
All sites in August’s top 10 saw a decrease in unique visitors during September. While Google remained the most visited website again during September 2011 with roughly 171 million unique US visitors, it experienced a drop of about 3% from 176 million in August. Similarly, the second-most visited site, Facebook, also saw a decline in unique visitors, dropping 5% from 165 million to 155 million. The top sites among US web users remained largely the same as the month before, with the Ask Search Network overtaking Apple as the 10th ranked brand in terms of total audience.
Active Internet Users Drop Off
Overall, less than 211 million Americans were active on the Internet in September 2011, a decrease of 2.4% compared to 216 million the previous month.
Nielsen estimates that Internet access continued to grow, with over 275 million Americans connected as of September 2011, meaning that roughly three-quarters of those with internet access used it at least once.
comScore: Microsoft, Viacom Pick Up Video Viewers
Microsoft sites and Viacom Digital reported the best month-over-month unique viewer performance among the top five US online video properties in September 2011, according to comScore VideoMetrix data. Microsoft sites reported about 54 million viewers, up 16% from 46.4 million viewers, while Viacom Digital reported 53.4 million viewers, up 7% from 49.9 million viewers. Microsoft climbed from fifth to third place, pushing August’s third place finisher Facebook.com down to fifth place as it lost 3.4% of its 51.6 million viewers, dropping to 49.9 million. Viacom maintained its fourth place position.