Comscore Reports That More Than 14 Million U.K. Internet Users Visited a Blog in August
Google-Owned Blogger.com is the Country’s Most Popular Blogging Destination
LONDON, U.K., October 30, 2008 - 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.
“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 | |||
Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) | Average Pages per Visitor | Average Visits per 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 | |||
Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) | Average Pages per Visitor | Average Visits per 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* | ||
Category | Total Unique Visitors (000) | Composition Index 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