Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number of page views per visitor per month. You have to bear in mind that “Google sites” includes the figures for YouTube.com.
Perhaps more surprising is that fact that Vkontakte, the highly successful Russian social network, manages almost as manage page views per visitor as Google despite the fact that it is disadvantaged statistically by only being able to count on users in Russia and demonstrating the growing importance of Russia in Europe. Microsoft sites, eBay and Yahoo all put in creditable performances but are followed by another Russian site, Yandex, the number one Russian search engine.
When “engagement” is considered, the Russian social network often considered to be a copy of Facebook, beats Facebook for engagement minutes per user by quite a substantial margin of 170 extra minutes per user per month. Meanwhile, Facebook remains well ahead of the Microsoft and Google sites.
For reach Google still has it reaching over 90% of the European population. It is helped in locations such as Russia, where it is not the number on search engine, by Youtube.com and other Google sites. From an advertisers point of view, Google has by far the strongest reach of any site in Europe.
