Some of the largest websites in the country had extraordinary swings in their audiences in 2009. Many of the most well-known web destinations lost large portions of their traffic

Based on data from Hitwise comparing US traffic market share from January to figures from November Ebay (NASDAQ:EBAY) lost 37% of its visitors. Craigslist lost 43% of its traffic, making it the largest loser among the top 25 sites. Neither number is surprising. Ebay’s earnings have been lackluster. Classified postings for apartments and jobs at Craigslist may have been hurt by the recession.

Other sites that had sharp drops in visits include Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO), Yahoo! search, and News Corp’s (NYSE:NWS) MySpace all of which were down more than 20% during the measurement period. The MySpace figure is not surprising. The social network has been losing members to Facebook. Among the top 25 sites, Facebook has the largest gain, up 236%. The Yahoo! figures support data from other research firms covering search traffic. Yahoo! has been losing ground to Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). Google was the most visited of all sites measured by Hitwise and its traffic rose 7%.

Among the largest e-commerce sites, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), the 2oth most visited site among all US destinations, had a 64% increase in visits compared to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), the No. 15 site, which had a 26% increase. Wal-Mart and Amazon are locked in struggle for holiday shoppers and both have cut prices on popular items including e-books and DVDs. Visits to Target.com (NYSE:TGT) were 69% higher. Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) visits rose 23%.

Other notable increases among large sites were MSN, up 58% and YouTube which rose 109%, confirming the trend of improving visits to online video sites.

Sports sites did particularly well. Visits to ESPN.com were up 48%. Yahoo! Sports traffic rose 51%.

Very few people would be surprised by the site among the top 50 that gained the most. Visits to Twitter were up 559%.

Rank	Websites	Domain	9-Nov	9-Jan	Rank-Jan2009	% Change
1	Google	http://www.google.com	6.85%	6.42%	1	7%
2	Facebook	http://www.facebook.com	6.47%	1.93%	5	236%
3	Yahoo! Mail	mail.yahoo.com	3.95%	4.75%	2	-17%
4	Yahoo!	http://www.yahoo.com	2.72%	3.52%	4	-23%
5	MySpace	http://www.myspace.com	2.67%	3.53%	3	-24%
6	YouTube	http://www.youtube.com	1.96%	0.94%	10	109%
7	MSN	http://www.msn.com	1.76%	1.12%	9	58%
8	Windows Live Mail	mail.live.com	1.71%	1.62%	6	5%
9	Yahoo! Search	search.yahoo.com	1.24%	1.56%	8	-20%
10	eBay	http://www.ebay.com	1.00%	1.58%	7	-37%
11	Bing	http://www.bing.com	0.96%	N/A	DNR	NA
12	Gmail	http://www.gmail.com	0.91%	0.90%	11	1%
13	AOL	http://www.aol.com	0.73%	0.27%	24	170%
14	AOL Mail	mail.aol.com	0.58%	0.45%	14	28%
15	Amazon.com	http://www.amazon.com	0.49%	0.39%	19	26%
16	Google Image Search	images.google.com	0.49%	0.54%	12	-9%
17	My Yahoo!	my.yahoo.com	0.48%	0.40%	17	18%
18	Wikipedia	http://www.wikipedia.org	0.43%	0.52%	13	-19%
19	Yahoo! News	news.yahoo.com	0.31%	0.38%	20	-20%
20	Walmart	http://www.walmart.com	0.27%	0.17%	36	64%
21	Pogo	http://www.pogo.com	0.25%	0.42%	16	-39%
22	Ask.com	http://www.ask.com	0.25%	0.27%	23	-9%
23	Craig’s List	http://www.craigslist.org	0.24%	0.43%	15	-43%
24	Google maps	maps.google.com	0.23%	0.19%	32	22%
25	Bank of America Online Banking	onlinebanking-nw.bankofamerica.com	0.22%	0.27%	25	-18%
26	Yahoo! Finance	finance.yahoo.com	0.22%	0.27%	26	-19%
27	Tagged	http://www.tagged.com	0.21%	0.14%	42	49%
28	Bank of America	http://www.bankofamerica.com	0.20%	0.22%	27	-8%
29	Chase Online	chaseonline.chase.com	0.18%	0.15%	41	24%
30	eBay Motors	http://www.ebaymotors.com	0.17%	0.30%	21	-43%
31	Target	http://www.target.com	0.16%	0.09%	62	69%
32	Yahoo! Address Book	address.yahoo.com	0.16%	0.29%	22	-45%
33	MapQuest	http://www.mapquest.com	0.16%	0.20%	31	-22%
34	ESPN	http://www.espn.com	0.16%	0.11%	56	48%
35	PayPal	http://www.paypal.com	0.15%	0.20%	30	-23%
36	Yahoo! Answers	answers.yahoo.com	0.15%	0.14%	45	12%
37	Plentyoffish.com	http://www.plentyoffish.com	0.15%	0.21%	29	-27%
38	MSNBC	http://www.msnbc.com	0.15%	0.16%	37	-7%
39	Match.com	http://www.match.com	0.15%	0.06%	95	135%
40	Twitter	http://www.twitter.com	0.15%	0.02%	331	559%
41	CNN.com	http://www.cnn.com	0.14%	0.18%	34	-20%
42	Chase Banking	http://www.chase.com	0.13%	0.12%	52	8%
43	The Weather Channel – US	http://www.weather.com	0.13%	0.18%	33	-28%
44	Google News	news.google.com	0.13%	0.13%	50	1%
45	Yahoo! Sports	sports.yahoo.com	0.12%	0.08%	74	51%
46	Wells Fargo – Online Banking	online.wellsfargo.com	0.12%	0.15%	38	-24%
47	Yahoo! Profiles	members.yahoo.com	0.12%	0.05%	132	140%
48	Google Video	video.google.com	0.11%	0.05%	128	124%
49	Wells Fargo	http://www.wellsfargo.com	0.11%	0.13%	49	-11%
50	Yahoo! Accounts	edit.yahoo.com	0.11%	0.09%	71	28%
51	NetFlix.com	http://www.netflix.com	0.11%	0.12%	53	-8%
52	AOL Search	http://www.aolsearch.com	0.11%	0.08%	82	47%
53	Yahoo! Games	games.yahoo.com	0.11%	0.14%	43	-23%
54	Singlesnet	http://www.singlesnet.com	0.11%	0.21%	28	-49%
55	Yahoo! Sports – Fantasy Football	football.fantasysports.yahoo.com	0.10%	0.01%	1463	1840%
56	The Internet Movie Database	http://www.imdb.com	0.10%	0.13%	46	-27%
57	BestBuy	http://www.bestbuy.com	0.10%	0.08%	79	23%
58	Fox News	http://www.foxnews.com	0.10%	0.09%	63	2%
59	Photobucket	http://www.photobucket.com	0.09%	0.15%	39	-38%
60	Wachovia Online Services	onlineservices.wachovia.com	0.09%	0.11%	55	-13%

 

Douglas A. McIntyre