Nielsen partners to measure China's Internet usage

Curious about the Chinese online marketplace? With China one of the world's fastest growing online arenas, you should be and a partnership between Nielsen Online and Beijing Zhongqian Wangrun Informtion Technology Company Ltd., could help.

by Kristina Knight

This month, the two announced a partnership to track China's online usage and to create and publish website rankings for China. This is the first authorized project in China; so far, the project seems to have support throughout the country.

"With more that 250 million Internet users, China represents a significant opportunity for our clients, and there has been a loud call to support this expanding market with high quality, independent online measurement services," said Itzhak Fisher, executive chairman of Nielsen Online. "We are delighted to be partnering with ChinaRank to develop and deliver services."

In their first joint report, ChinaRank-Nielsen (CR-Nielsen) ranked the top fifteen most highly trafficked sites; the rankings were complied after studying data collected from September 8, 2008 through September 14, 2008.

Search engine Baidu ranked first with 171 million unique users, Tencent (QQ) ranked second with 117 unique. Sina (108 million unique users) , Google/China (81 million unique users and Sohu (74 million unique) rounded out the top five most visited websites.