Google, Microsoft, eBay lead February "visits"

At first glance, comScore's new "visits" metric doesn't seem to have impacted February's traffic rankings in the United Kingdom. The new metric measures how long users are engaged with a website; if they don't remain active for 30 minutes, the visit is considered over.

by Kristina Knight

According to February numbers, Google received the most visits in the U.K. with 26 million. Microsoft sites had the second most visitors with 25.9 million and eBay received the third-most visitors with 21.6 million. Those same three web hubs led January traffic numbers with nearly the same frequency. However, when coupled with the amount of time spent on the website, there was a slight change. Google (33.2 visits) and Microsoft (31.9 visits) still led the way, but eBay fell in the rankings to sixth. The online auction site was replaced by Bebo.com (17 visits), Yahoo (16 visits) and Time Warner Network (12 visits).

comScore introduced the new visits metric earlier this month, saying that by tracking the amount of time users spent on specific sites, advertisers and publishers would better know how their site is doing in the grand scheme of online advertising. In the past, advertisers and publishers simply paid attention to pageviews (how many or which pages were viewed most) rather than the amount of time users spent per page.