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Hitwise Intelligence - James Murray - UK

Analyst Weblog

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YouTube accounts for 1 in 4 visits to social networks

January 11, 2012

YouTube had its biggest ever month of traffic as 606 million UK Internet visits went to the website in December 2011. YouTube now accounts for 1 in every 4 visits to a social network in the UK and 1 in every 30 visits online.

December was a big month for video sites with over 936 million visits to websites like YouTube and BBC iPlayer. Last week we blogged about the big Christmas hits on catch-up TV but YouTube was very much at the forefront of online video in December accounting for 65% of all visits to video websites that month.

Over the last 12 months YouTube has seen some pretty phenomenal growth. In our Search and Social analysis YouTube was consistently one of the fastest moving websites within the Experian Hitwise Social Networking and Forums category and had six consecutive months as the fastest growing social site in the UK. Total visits to YouTube increased by 45% between December 2010 and December 2011 going up from 417 million visits to 606 million visits.

In the latest December statistics YouTube accounted for 25% of all visits to social networks, up from 23.61% in November. Year-on-year YouTube’s growth of total visits has meant that its market share of visits to social networks has increased by 7 percentage points from nearly 18% to 25%.

In the search market Google was dominant again with nearly 92% of all UK Internet searches conducted in December. This year retailers were relying more on search traffic than last December, with 43% of all visits going to retail websites coming from a search engine.

You can find out more about the latest Search and Social data by reading our press release. We will also be publishing our Christmas 2011 Review later this week so look out for that. In the meantime you can follow Hitwise UK on Twitter for the latest data updates.

Tweet Posted by James Murray at 12:16 PM | (0)
In Categories Search | Social Networks