Compete Releases Ranking of Top 50 Web Sites for January 2010

Boston MA, –  (February 24, 2010) -- Compete, a Kantar Media company, today released its ranking of the top 50 Web sites for January 2010. At the category level, tax and travel Web sites saw the most dramatic traffic increases in January 2010. The top five fastest growing Web sites in January were tax related, while five of the top 20 high-growth sites were dedicated to travel. In aggregate, the top travel sites attracted more than 21 million unique visitors (UVs), while the tax and accounting category saw more than 29.6 million UVs.

Death and Taxes

Consumers marked the official beginning of the tax season in the US by visiting sites in Compete's "Financial Services: Accountancy and Tax Service" category. As the fastest growing site category in the first month of the year, traffic was up 292 percent compared to December 2009 and 11.5 percent over January 2009.

Taxact.com experienced the largest month-over-month growth in this category with 6.87 million UVs, representing a 42.14 percent year-over-year growth. Taxactonline.com (6.41 million UVs), Intuit.com (11.97 million UVs), and HRBlock.com (7.87 million UVs) also experienced triple-digit month-over-month growth.

On the Road Again

Travelers started planning their winter getaways in January 2010, causing a spike in Compete's travel categories. Vacation Rental sites (5.27 million UVs) drew 37.6 percent more traffic than in December 2009, Cruise Agencies (4.1 million UVs) grew 31.4 percent in terms of online traffic, and Independent Hotels and Resorts (5.54 million UVs) experienced a 23.84 percent spike.

Travel Web sites also made a strong showing as some of the fastest growing sites on the Web in January. Travelocity topped the list with 10.85 million UVs and 32.2 percent month-over-month growth. Hotwire.com grew 31.45 percent over December 2009 to reach 6.04 million UVs, while TripAdvisor.com pulled in more than 11 million travelers, growing 24.4 percent month-over-month and 34.5 percent over 2009.

Top 50 Moves

Also making headlines this month, Facebook overtook Yahoo as the number two site on the Web with 133.6 million unique visitors (UVs) in January 2010. By contrast, Yahoo drew 132.0 million UVs, and Google held the number one slot – from which the site first dethroned Yahoo in February 2008 – with 147.8 million monthly visitors.

Information regarding aggregate Web categories is drawn from the Compete PRO Enterprise edition on Compete.com. For more information on the enterprise offering, please contact aprebluda@compete.com.

About Compete
Compete, a Kantar Media company, helps the world's top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Leading marketers such as Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Hyundai Motor America, Upromise, Chrysler, and Verizon Wireless rely on Compete's services to create effective online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns. Compete's online behavior database—the largest in the industry—makes the Web as ingrained in marketing as it is in people's lives. Compete was founded in 2000 and is located in Boston, MA, with offices throughout the U.S. For more information about us, please visit www.competeinc.com/, or to join the conversation visit www.compete.com/.

About Kantar
Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group's services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com.