• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 21, 2005

Consumers in June spent slightly more of their Web-surfing time visiting content and communications sites, while decreasing the proportion of time spent at e-commerce sites and search engines, according to the Online Publishers Association monthly "Internet Activity Index," released Wednesday.

Online users spent an estimated 557 million hours last month visiting content sites, including news and entertainment pages such as CNN.com, MapQuest, and Windows Media Player--up from 536.4 million hours in May and 500.8 million in June of 2004. Time spent at content sites represented 36.9 percent of all online time in June--a slight increase from both May's 36 percent and 36.5 percent in June of 2004.

Of the categories posting declines, search engines showed the bigger loss, with consumers spending just 4.3 percent of all online time, or 65.4 million hours, on search. The month before, time spent at search engines amounted to 4.7 percent of all online time, or 69.9 million hours; and, in June 2004, search represented 4.4 percent of online time, which came to 60.5 million hours.

Consumers spent 17.5 percent of their Web time at e-commerce sites--down from 18.4 percent in May, but up from 15.7 percent in June of 2004. All together, consumers clocked 263.1 million hours at online retail sites last month, compared to 273.9 million in May and 215.9 million in June of 2004.

The report was compiled using data from Nielsen//NetRatings.