Facebook and YouTube dominant in the UK, says Hitwise
Facebook and YouTube dominate the UK social networking scene, according to Hitwise numbers for July 2011, though we're still waiting to see the impact of Google Plus. The hit-tracker also notes that Microsoft’s Bing has regained its position as UK’s second favourite search engine, but it's so far behind Google that it doesn't make any difference. Google sites still account for more than 90% of UK searches, and this monopoly market share provides the company with a strong base from which to invade other market spaces, such as Facebook's.
Experian Hitwise's latest Search Engine and Social Analysis figures show that Facebook is still the top social networking site with more than 50% of UK visits. However, its share has dropped by 3.6 percent compared with last month, and by 4.5% compared with July last year. Hitwise adds: "Facebook's dominance of the UK social market hasn't been this low since October 2009, when the network accounted for 50.46% of all visits to the category."
Meanwhile, YouTube has made impressive progress. Hitwise says: "YouTube continued its exceptional growth as the fastest moving social network for the fifth consecutive month. One in every 35 visits to a website by UK Internet users now goes to YouTube and the video site now accounts for 22.54% of all visits to social networks, its highest market share of the UK social landscape recorded to date."
Robin Goad from Hitwise comments: "A lot of YouTube’s growth has come from usage on mobile devices. One in 20 visits to YouTube now comes from a mobile device used on a home Wi-Fi network, and that doesn’t take into account the millions of videos watched each month using the 3G networks."
Twitter came a distant third in the UK, with just 3.5 percent of visits to social networking sites. However, MySpace came tenth, with only 0.44 percent, behind Linked In (0.83 percent) and Moshi Monsters (0.48 percent).
Hitwise UK social networking table for July 2011
In the search section, Google sites remained totally dominant with 91.0 percent of visits, ahead of Microsoft sites (3.8 percent), Yahoo sites (3.0 percent) and Ask sites (1.4 percent). Only Microsoft increased its market share compared with the same month last year, but it gained an almost insignificant 0.67 percent.