• by June 11, 2001

The Internet ratings report for the month of May 2001 from Nielsen//NetRatings revealed that search engines, portals and online communities as a category garner the largest amount of Web traffic with nearly 95 million people or one out of every three Americans, capturing a reach of more than 92%.

"Search engines, portals, and community sites have established themselves as a mandatory part of every surfers' online habits," said Sean Kaldor, vice president of eCommerce for NetRatings, Inc. "Nine out of every ten Web users go to such a site every month, and are going there more frequently - nearly five times monthly."

Telecommunications and Internet service sites follow a distant second, attracting nearly 70% of the Web population or 72 million surfers.

"Telecommunications and Internet services sites continue to play a significant role in daily Web usage as well, growing faster than search engines and portals," added Kaldor. "Key to their growth has been the overwhelming success of free e-mail services. Companies which have aligned themselves in both of these top two categories, such as MSN and Yahoo! among others, are ideally positioned to dominate surfer mind-share and wallet-share."

The entertainment category followed closely behind telecommunications with 69 million people or 67% of Web surfers.

Despite the decline in traffic to Napster, the overall entertainment category continues to be robust, ranking as the third most visited category for home surfer.