If we compare the situation today to 10 years ago- Does internet users are spending more or less time on the top 10 sites? Does the massive expansion of the web has also expanded the users surfing habits to browse regularly in more sites? And who were back then the top sites compared for today? I will try to answer all these questions in the following article…
The purpose of this post is to analyze if online users are visiting and spending time more or less on the top websites today compared to the past. For that, i will use a recent blog post by one of the major web data measuring sites online, Compete, that discusses internet users surfing behaviors in the past 10 years over 3 periods of time- November 2001, November 2006 and September 2011.
Top 10 Websites Pageviews Share
Back in 2001, the top 10 websites were responsible for 31% of the total share of pageviews on the web. In 2006, there was a significant increase of the top 10 websites pageviews as it jumped to 40% share. In 2011, it went down to 34% share, however it still more than what it was in 2001.
It seems that the internet might has changed drastically over the last 10 years, however, the internet users behavior hasn’t… The top websites total pageviews share remained in the margin between 31%-40% as the web centralization around few websites stayed more or less the same.
Top 10 Websites Time Spent Share
If the top sites pageviews share stabilized, in terms of top websites time spent, it only increased- In 2001, internet users spent 30% of their total time online on the top sites. In 2006, people spent more time on the top sites as it grew to 35% out of their total time online. In 2011, it received another slight increase up to 36%.
2006-2011 Top 10 Websites – Less Pageviews But More Time Spent?
Supposedly, there is some sort of paradox- How can it be that between 2006 to 2011 the top sites pageviews share has decreased while the top sites time spent share has increased? There is a perfectly logical explanation for this- Social networking.
In general, people are spending much more time on social networking sites than any types of other sites. And While in 2001 there weren’t any social networking sites around and in 2006 they just began their journey, in 2011 they already taking a major part in most of the internet users lives!
For your convenience here’s a list of the top 10 sites throughout the past 10 years by pageviews share (If you want to go back in time more, you can visit this article):
