eBay is worldwide web favourite

Online auctioneer eBay has ousted Amazon.com from its position as the world's most popular e-commerce site, according to a survey by Nielsen/Net Ratings.

eBay's visitors grew by almost 4m in March to reach 22m, while Amazon.com gained only 1m more visitors and lagged behind eBay by almost 50,000.

It also beat Amazon and set an e-commerce industry record in terms of page views, with 1.3bn for the month -- Amazon had 164m -- and in terms of the time spent on the site. Visitors spent an average of 1.5 hours a month at eBay, compared with 13 minutes at Amazon.com.