European engagement, top web properties rankings for March 2011

Among the individual markets, Germany had the largest Internet audience (age 15+) with 49.7 million unique visitors, followed by Russia with 47.4 million visitors and France with 42.3 million visitors. Visitors coming from the Netherlands exhibited the highest engagement, spending 34.4 hours on average online in March - 33% higher than Europe as a whole - followed by the visitors in the United Kingdom who spent 33.0 hours on average. Visitors in the Netherlands also viewed 3,515 pages each on average, 31% greater than the European average.

Top web properties in Europe

Google Sites ranked as the top European web property in March, attracting 330.3 million unique visitors and reaching 90.8% of the total European Internet audience. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 272.8 million visitors (75.0% reach), followed by Facebook.com in third place with 234.6 million visitors (64.5% reach).

Russian social network VKontakte had the highest average engagement among the top 30 properties, with visitors spending an average of 405.1 minutes (6.8 hours) on the site over the course of the month. Russian Mail.ru Group ranked second at 310.0 minutes (5.2 hours), followed by Facebook.com with an average of 285.7 minutes (4.8 hours).

Facebook.com accounted for the highest number of page views in March with 109.9 billion, representing 11.3% of all pages viewed that month. Google Sites ranked second with 94.8 billion page views, followed by VKontakte with 33.1 billion page views.

Spotlight: Spain

In March 2011, the total audience in Spain was 23.5 million unique people, up 5% from a year ago. Internet users in Spain spent the most time on Portals sites, at 517.8 minutes (8.6 hours) per person on average. Instant Messengers and Social Networking sites ranked second and third, with an average of 375.6 minutes and 345.0 minutes, respectively.

*Excludes Services and Corporate Presence.

Microsoft Sites and Google Sites continued to lead the Spanish market in terms of total unique visitors, attracting 22.8 million visitors and 22.2 million visitors in March, respectively. With its acquisition of social networking site Tuenti, Spanish telecommunications company Terra Telefonica grew its visitation to 14.0 million unique visitors, up 67% from a year ago.

In terms of engagement, Terra Telefonica also led the market with 321.2 minutes per visitor, buoyed in large part by Tuenti's highly engaged user base (473.6 average minutes per visitor). Despite Tuenti's high engagement, Facebook still ranked as the top social network in Spain in March, with 15.7 million unique visitors and a 66.8% reach of the market. Overall, Social Networking as a category saw significant gains in penetration over the past year, from 78.7% to 95.7% of all Spanish Internet users.