YouTube brand top in U.K.

In just twelve months, the number of Internet users visiting video websites in the U.K. has rocketed, according to recent data released by internet monitoring firm Hitwise.

by Helen Leggatt

Traffic to online video websites is on the rise across the globe. No more so than in the U.K., where traffic to video sites increased 178% in the twelve months to February this year.

It appears that YouTube is to online video what Google is to search. YouTube and YouTubeUK were the first and second most popular video sites in Britain, according to Hitwise’s recently released data. Together the sites accounted for 70% of market share whereas YouTube in the U.S. has around only 34%.

The BBC’s TV streaming service, BBC iPlayer, beat MySpace to third place in the list of top 25 online video sites, increasing its share of U.K. Internet visits by a massive 423% since December last year.

“One in every 40 searches in the U.K. during February 2008 resulted in a visit to a video site, up from one in every 117 a year before,” writes Research Director, Robin Goad on the Hitwise blog. “Nearly one-third of all traffic to the top 25 video sites in the UK comes from search engines, and the range and variety of videos that people are searching for continues to increase.”