• by May 15, 2002

Jupiter Media Metrix today released the Media Metrix U.S. Top 50 Web and digital media property ratings for April 2002. According to the new data, while the overall search category grew steadily over the past six months – 11% to 92.3 million unique visitors - the three largest search sites experienced especially strong growth. Google Sites grew 54% to 34.2 million unique visitors; Yahoo! Search grew 20% to 38.4 million; and MSN Search grew 16% to 42.4 million. Google, which recently announced an alliance with AOL, surpassed AOL.com Search in the April 2002 rankings.

"The top rankings and solid growth of MSN, Yahoo! and AOL's search channels reflect their core function as launch pads for surfing the Web," said Stephen Kim, senior vice president of JMM’s audience ratings division. "But the most significant movement has been by Google, whose recent partnerships and reputation for quality searches allowed it to grow at a phenomenal rate."

Alliances Between Small Search Engines, Larger Portals

Many smaller search sites have gained a foothold in the search category, largely a result of leveraging advancements in technology, meta-searches and niche searches. While audience acquisition is not always the primary reason for a smaller search engine to partner with a larger portal, differing levels of unique visitors inevitably follow suit. Search.com, whose parent property is CNET Networks, increased 32% to 4.1 million visitors between November 2001 and April 2002. Webring.com, affiliated with Yahoo! Sites, increased 57% to 1.4 million visitors over the same period. Conversely, Hotbot.com, affiliated with Terra Lycos, decreased 21% to 2.3 million visitors; and Webcrawler, affiliated with Infospace Network, decreased 12% to 996,000 visitors.

Leading Growth Search Sites

Among the biggest gainers in the search category are independent sites with partnerships similar to Google or have niche target audiences such as with CNET's Search.com. Engine54.com, which combines meta-search technology with shopping directories, increased 105% to 1.2 million unique visitors between November 2001 and April 2002. Bay9.com, which recently changed its name to Xuppa.com and targets online shoppers and auction hunters, increased 89% to 2.3 million visitors. Picosearch.com, a hosted search engine that can be embedded within personal Web pages, grew 45% to 985,000 visitors.

Online Universe Rises - The number of people using the Internet increased from 114.1 million in March 2002 to 116.4 million in April 2002.

Top Growth Categories - The car rental category had the largest percent-increase in traffic versus the prior month, increasing its audience reach 21%, from 2.8 to 3.4% of the overall online population. Fragrances and cosmetics increased its share 20%, from 5.0 to 6.0% of the online audience. And lotto and sweepstakes increased 18%, from 18.8 to 22.2% reach.

Top Gaining Properties - Major League Baseball's Mlb.com was the fastest growing property between March and April 2002, increasing 48% to 6.2 million unique visitors. The Discover Card property, driven by a strong advertising campaign and the addition of Novuslink.net, grew 42% to 6.6 million visitors. CDNow Inc. grew 38% to 6.7 million visitors.

Breaking In - Appearing in the Media Metrix ratings for the first time and attracting more than 500,000 unique visitors, April's number-one Top Newcomer is Freemovietheatertickets.com, a movie-ticket incentive site, with1.7 million visitors. Other notable newcomers include: Bodyimprover.com, which sells the diet supplement Inferno, with 599,000 visitors; Findserenitynow.com, a site that sells the mood stabilizer Serenity, with 1.3 million visitors; and Speakwithageek.com, a one-stop shop for handling computer problems, with 506,000 visitors.