Microsoft sites peak in online engagement

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Chennai: Microsoft sites captured nearly 15% of the time spent online worldwide in September, making it the most engaging global property, followed by Google sites, Yahoo! and Facebook, reveals a study on online engagement by comScore World Metrix service. Among the top four—Facebook—witnessed an impressive year-on-year 193% growth as the most engaging destination when compared to September of previous year with visitors spending 1.4 billion hours on the site.

In September 2009, nearly 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet globally by a record online population of 1.2 billion Internet users aged between 15 and above. Microsoft sites accounted for 14.5% of total minutes spent online in September, making it the most engaging global portal, with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger representing nearly 70% of time spent on the site during the month.

Google sites captured 9.3% of total minutes (2.5 billion hours), with YouTube accounting for nearly half of total time spent (1.2 billion hours) at the search engine. Yahoo! ranked as the third most engaging Web property at 1.7 billion hours, followed by Facebook at 1.4 billion hours. Facebook’s share of attention reached 5.1% in September, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from the previous year, as its continued growth in popularity influenced this surge in share, says the study.

A regional analysis of the top global properties in time spent by their visitors revealed different preferences across global markets. Microsoft held the largest share of time spent among the top worldwide sites in Europe (16.8%), Latin America (35.9%) and the West Asia-Africa (33.1%). Yahoo! captured the largest share of time in North America with 11.2% share, while also attracting a notable 7.9% share of time spent in the Asia-Pacific region.

Google sites commanded a strong share of time spent in Latin America (19.4%), West Asia-Africa (9.7%), Europe (9.6%) and North America (9.1%). China’s Tencent Inc captured the largest share of visitors’ time in Asia-Pacific with a 10.7% share, but had negligible engagement in other worldwide regions, adds the study.