Holidays boost Web traffic, Microsoft gains momentum

NEW YORK: Jupiter Media Metrix on Wednesday said the holidays boosted traffic

to the Web sites of Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. in November, while Microsoft

Corp. logged the biggest increase in traffic among rivals AOL Time Warner Inc.

and Yahoo Inc.

AOL Time Warner maintained the top spot in terms of traffic with 84 million

unique visitors, or the number of users who visited the Web site at least once

in the given month, up 33 per cent year over year.

But Microsoft showed the most momentum, growing 39 per cent from a year

earlier to 75 million users. Yahoo's traffic grew 31 per cent from a year

earlier to 72 million unique users.

While AOL Time Warner's share of digital media usage remains three times its

nearest competitor, Microsoft, its share went down to 27 per cent in November

from 34 per cent in October, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker said in a

research note.

The November Internet traffic report also showed that usage time at AOL Time

Warner Inc. fell to its lowest level since April 2000 to 433 minutes, Meeker

said in her note. However, Jupiter Media Metrix said a large part of the

decrease was due to changes the company has made in measuring usage. With recent

changes, average usage in October for AOL Time Warner was 501 minutes.

The Internet research firm implemented several changes including an updated

policy on the reporting of pop-up and pop-under pages -- a feature which has

raised a good deal of scrutiny in the industry and irked many Web surfers.

Jupiter also implemented a new categorization structure that now ranks portal

channels, online software applications and commercial online services such as

AOL, CompuServe and United Online side by side in 27 categories and 71

subcategories.

To provide better insight into how people consume online media from home,

Jupiter Media Metrix also introduced a new Internet Access Report that breaks

out the top browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Netscape, and commercial

online services that people use to access the Web and proprietary networks.

(C) Reuters Limited.