“Google’s popularity has been driven in part by its international appeal as well as the rapid uptake of some of Google’s applications beyond traditional Web search,” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.  “Examples include the 40-percent year-over-year growth in visitors to Google Image Search, the 71-percent growth in visitors to Gmail, and the 62-percent growth in visitors to Google Maps.”

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top Gaining Categories in 2006

Overall, the top-gaining categories worldwide in 2006 included Multimedia (up 37 percent), Community (up 33 percent), E-mail (up 16 percent), News/Information (up 15 percent) and Games (up 14 percent).   A major driver of growth in the multimedia category wasYouTube.com, which grew 1,972 percent versus year ago to reach 120 million worldwide visitors in December.  In the Community category, which includes social networking sites, MySpace and Blogger were both significant growth drivers, growing 159 percent to 90 million worldwide visitors and 90 percent to 93 million worldwide visitors, respectively.  Growth in the e-mail category was driven largely by the rapid adoption of Google Gmail, which was up 71 percent to 60 million visitors year-over-year.  Growth in the News/Information category was driven largely by MSN News & Weather (up 131 percent to 25 million worldwide visitors), Yahoo! News (up 44 percent year-over-year to 104 million worldwide visitors), and New York Times Digital (up 20 percent to 68 million worldwide visitors).  Finally, the Games category was driven by sites like Nintendo.com (up 157 percent to 19 million worldwide visitors), EA Online (up 13 percent to 27 million worldwide visitors), and Yahoo! Games (up 10 percent to 58 million worldwide visitors).

About comScore World Metrix

comScore World Metrix is the first service to continuously measure and report online behaviour on a world-wide basis, providing visitation metrics and demographic characteristics for Web site audiences around the world.  With active representation of countries that comprise the vast majority of the global Internet population, World Metrix provides its clients with worldwide Internet population estimates and harmonized online performance metrics based on a consistent methodology across all countries.  More than 100 clients subscribe to comScore’s World Metrix service, including 8 of the top 10 interactive advertising agencies.

About comScore Networks
comScore Networks is a global leader in measuring the digital age. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behaviour, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panellists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behaviour and attitudes.  comScore consultants apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI.  comScore services are used by global leaders such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Interactive, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestlé, MBNA, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Merck and Expedia.  For more information, please visit www.comscore.com.