• by Kate Kaye , February 24, 2004

In 1996, the Internet was still uncharted territory, and only the tech-savvy and pioneers among us knew the hiss of the modem. Sites like Prodigy.com were king, and .edu and .gov domains dotted the landscape of the top 50 most frequented sites.

What a short, strange trip it's been. In a mere eight years, the Web has become a virtual playground and workspace for more than 150 million Americans, according to comScore Media Metrix. The online research firm today marks the eight-year anniversary of online consumer measurement by re-releasing its numbers from January 1996, practically the Middle Ages of this still nascent medium, when only around 20 million American adults were online.

In January of '96, AOL.com led the pack of online providers with 41 percent of total Internet audience reach. WebCrawler.com, Netscape.com, and Yahoo.com followed with 33 percent, 31 percent, and 29 percent reach, respectively. Infoseek.com, Prodigy.com, Compuserve.com, UMich.edu, Primenet.com, and Well.com rounded out the top ten sites ranked by total Internet audience reach.

The Web has grown far more commercial and pervasive in all aspects of the lives of mainstream Americans since those early days. Today, media and entertainment sites dominate. Viacom online properties, Real.com Network, and gaming outlet EA Online (gaming giant Electronic Arts' online community), are among the top 50 most visited sites. And the Big Three online publishers--Yahoo!, MSN, and Time Warner sites--are neck and neck, each garnering around 70 percent of total Internet audiences, or more than 100 million people per month according to comScore Media Metrix.

"Everything in this medium happens faster than everything else," affirms Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix, with regard to the speedy consolidation of large Internet media companies.

Formidable players have also emerged in other Internet segments. For instance, while e-commerce was little more than a gleam in Jeff Bezos's eye back in '96, Amazon.com and eBay have become household names. eBay came in fourth in comScore Media Metrix's January 2004 rankings, with 41.6 percent audience reach. Amazon sites were in eighth place, with 19.6 percent. More than 83 million Americans, or 55 percent of Web users, visited one of the two e-tailing giants. Shopping.com sites and Wal-Mart also made the top 50.

Another site whose name has entered the collective consciousness--as well as the general lexicon only in recent years--is Google, which ranked fifth with 34.5 percent audience reach. Terra Lycos, About/Primedia, Viacom Online, and The Weather Channel also made comScore's January 2004 top ten.

The way we travel has been revolutionized by the Web, as evinced by the success of sites such as Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, and Trip Network sites, which are all listed in comScore Media Metrix's January 2004 top 50.

"We've always recognized the importance of measuring the Internet in terms of commerce activity," notes Daboll, who adds that the way in which the company measures Web usage has been transformed over the years based on client needs. Products that have been developed since 1996 include media evaluation, commerce tracking, and search tracking tools.

"The Internet is constantly evolving," says Daboll. "The way it should be tracked needs to develop with it."