• Reuters, Thursday, June 28, 2007 10:45 AM

YouTube may have been getting negative press for copyright suits and pulling videos, but new data from Hitwise shows that the online video giant is kicking butt. Since Google purchased it in November, YouTube has seen its U.S. traffic rise 70% between January and May, a Hitwise survey revealed Wednesday.

Combined, traffic to the top 64 video sites beneath it rose a paltry 8%. "As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined," says Hitwise report author and research director LeeAnn Prescott.

Indeed, YouTube's share of online video traffic mirrored Google's share of search, at 60.2% in May. The survey showed that MySpace, the number two video site, had a 16.08% share. Google Video was third with 7.81%, Yahoo Video fourth with 2.77% and MSN Video fifth with 2.09%. The Hitwise report tracks total visits to these video sites, not video streams or embedded videos, which account for most of the video viewing on MySpace.

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