The top 10 web domains by percentage of total time spent online accounted for 36% of total consumer attention in September 2011, according to December analysis from Compete. Data from the analysis indicates that this represents a small increase from 35% share of attention in September 2006, but a significant 20% rise from 30% share in September 2001. According to Compete insight, these results disprove the “long-tail theory” that describes the democratization of media and business through the internet by removing some of the institutionalized hegemonic powers of the largest mainstream outlets.
Top 3 Get One-Quarter Share
Compete data shows that Facebook (15%) boasted the top share of time spent online in September, more than double the share accounted for by YouTube (6%), and almost quadruple the share held by Yahoo and Google (both at 4%). Rounding out the top 5 was Craisglist, which held a 2% share of total time spent online.
According to Nielsen data released in November, the majority of top brands in average monthly time spent per user experienced a decrease in time spent on their sites during 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.
Page View Data More Mixed
According to Compete, analysis of page views yields a cloudier picture when considering the “long-tail theory”: this year, the top 10 domains by page views accounted for 34% of total page views in September, representing an 11% decrease from 40% in September 2006. However, the share of total page views held by the top 10 domains was only 31% in September 2001, meaning that page view concentration has risen almost 10% in the past decade.
Facebook Tops for Page Views, Too
Facebook accounted for 11% of all page views in September 2011, more than double the share held by Craigslist (5%) and Google (5%). Yahoo (4%) and YouTube (4%) rounded out the top 5, ahead of Ebay (2%) and a range of other sites holding 1% share.
In September 2006, MySpace (16%) was the number 1 domain by page views, beating out Yahoo (8%), Ebay (4%), MSN (3%), AOL (3%), and Google (3%).
