Home surfers snub AOL for Microsoft

Microsoft stole AOL's crown as the most visited Website destination for home surfers in August.

Microsoft's combined sites saw 82.9 million unique visitors in a multi-company survey of the top 50 sites visited in the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia and Japan by Media Metrix. It toppled ISP giant AOL, with 81.3 million visitors, which had been top of the league since the New York-based company starting recording the user figures in March.

Yahoo, Lycos and Excite Network also made the top five, with 79 million, 47 million and 34 million respectively. But AOL visitors spent the most time online - an average of 357 minutes per month, compared to Microsoft's 76 minutes.

American home users spent the most time online in August - an average of 15 hours, compared to the multi-country average of 12.2 hours.

While home Internet users in Japan went logged on the most days - an average of 13.9 days, topping the multi-country 12.1 day average. Japan, which was included for the first time in Media Metrix's figures, represented 12 per cent of the total online population among the seven countries in the report (second biggest) - with 16.3 million unique visitors. The US was still way ahead, it claimed 56 per cent of the cyber-audience with 72.1 million visitors.

Canada and the UK came third and fourth, with nine million and eight million respectively.

In the UK the top five sites were Microsoft,
Yahoo, AOL, Dixons and Lycos. ®

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