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comScore Reports That More Than 14 Million U.K. Internet Users Visited a Blog in August
LONDON, October 30 /PRNewswire/ -- - Google-Owned Blogger.com is the Country's Most Popular Blogging Destination comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study of blog visitation in the U.K. examining the top blog platforms and individual blogs as ranked by total U.K. visitors. In August, 14.5 million people in the U.K. visited at least one blog, representing 41 percent of the total U.K. Internet audience. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO ) "Blogs have become part of the essential fabric of the Internet today," said Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director, comScore Europe. "They live and breathe in real-time, helping quench media consumers' thirst for the most up-to-date breaking news, information, and analysis. It should not, therefore, be particularly surprising that they're increasingly displacing traditional media usage and carving out an ever-increasing slice of the online advertising pie." Blog Platforms Blog platforms provide publishing software, enabling bloggers to create and manage their own blogs, which are hosted on the parent site. In August, the most popular blog platform in the U.K. was Google-owned Blogger.com, which attracted more than 9 million visitors, followed by WordPress (4.8 million visitors) and Six Apart sites (2.7 million visitors). A Selection of Leading Blog Platforms Ranked by Total U.K. Unique Visitors (000)* Age 15+ -- Home & Work Locations August 2008 Source: comScore World Metrix Total Average Average Unique Pages Visits Visitors per per Property (000) Visitor Visitor Total U.K. Internet Audience 35,608 2,580 53.3 Blogs 14,456 13 3.7 Blogger 9,019 6 2.6 WordPress 4,807 4 1.8 Six Apart Sites 2,651 7 1.9 HUBPAGES.COM 576 2 1.2 XANGA.COM 408 8 1.6 *Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. Top Individual Blogs Two of the most popular blogs in the U.K. are gadget blogs Engadget.com, which ranked as the top individual blog in August with 243,000 visitors, and Gizmodo.com, which ranked third with 223,000 visitors. Reality TV blog UnrealityTV.co.uk (225,000 visitors), gamer blog Kotaku.com (210,000 visitors), and community blog Metafilter.com (207,000 visitors) rounded out the top five. A Selection of Leading Individual Blogs Ranked by Total U.K. Unique Visitors (000)* Age 15+ -- Home & Work Locations August 2008 Source: comScore World Metrix Total Average Unique Average Visits Visitors Pages per per Property (000) Visitor Visitor Total U.K. Internet Audience 35,608 2,580 53.3 Blogs 14,456 13 3.7 ENGADGET.COM 243 2 1.6 UNREALITYTV.CO.UK 225 2 1.2 GIZMODO.COM 223 3 1.3 KOTAKU.COM 210 7 2.2 METAFILTER.COM 207 1 1.1 *Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. U.K. Bloggers are Younger and Tech Savvy, with a Sense of Humour Using the comScore Segment Metrix H/M/L service, which provides analysis of online activity by heavy, medium and light users of the Internet and specific site categories, we can gain insight into other interests of blog visitors. Heavy blog users were found to be 142 percent more likely than the average Internet user to visit a site in the humour category, a testament perhaps to the sharp wit often associated with blogging. They are also likely to be tech savvy, as evidenced by their skew in visitation to the Web hosting and technology news categories, and younger with a focus on education, as evidenced by their heavier than average visitation of the community -- teens and education-information site categories. Most Popular Site Categories Amongst Heavy Blog Users* Age 15+ -- Home & Work Locations** August 2008 Source: comScore World Metrix Total Unique Composition Visitors Index Category (000) UV*** Total Heavy Blogger Audience 2,891 100 Humour 1,165 242 Web Hosting 1,798 234 Hobbies/Lifestyle -- Food 637 233 Community -- Teens 1,054 230 Community -- Women 1,898 229 e-cards 682 220 Education -- Information 1,239 217 Technology -- News 1,902 215 Entertainment -- News 1,806 209 Retail -- Flowers/Gifts/Greetings 723 207 *Based on categories attracting 500+ U.K. heavy bloggers in August 2008. **Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. ***Composition Index = (Percent of visitors to category/Percent of total Internet users) x 100; Index of 100 equals parity. About comScore comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate Web site: http://www.comscore.com
