• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 13, 2005

In December, for the third month in a row, consumers increased the proportion of time they spent visiting e-commerce sites while decreasing the share of Web-surfing time spent at news, entertainment, and other content sites, according to a report released Thursday by the Online Publishers Association.

The monthly report, compiled with data from Nielsen//NetRatings, showed that in December, Web users spent 18.6 percent of their online time at shopping sites such as eBay--up both month-over-month (from 17 percent in November) and year-over-year (from 18.2 percent in December 2003). At the same time, the share of time spent browsing online news or entertainment Web sites dropped to 38.1 percent--the lowest proportion since June 2004, when content sites accounted for 36.5 percent of online time. Still, the share of time at content sites was higher year-over-year from December 2003, when it accounted for 34 percent of online time.

The share of time spent at search engines dropped slightly to 4.2 percent last month, from 4.3 percent in November. Nevertheless, consumers spent a greater proportion of online time searching than in December 2003, when search accounted for 3.7 percent of Internet time.