Investing

The Biggest Online Winners And Losers For 2009: EBay Traffic Collapse

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

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