Digital picture of Europe shows social media driving engagement

Russian social network site VKontakte had the highest average engagement, with visitors spending an average of 405.1 minutes (6.8 hours) on the site over the course of March.

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) in March.

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.

However, Google remained the most-visited site, with 330.3 million unique visitors, reaching 90.8% of the total European Internet audience.

Microsoft Sites ranked second with 272.8 million visitors and 75% reach, followed by Facebook.com in third place with 234.6 million visitors, a 64.5% reach.

In total, 363.7 million Europeans spent an average of 26 hours each in front of computers, although Dutch users went far beyond this, spending 34.4 hours – 33% more than the average – followed by the British on 33 hours, while the Austrians were bottom, spending 13.8 hours in front of the computer, followed by the Italians with 17.9 hours.

Germans spent 23.4 hours, but had the largest single market with 49.7 million users, followed by Russia with 47.4 million users and France with 42.3 million.

The Dutch, while spending the most time online, also viewed the most pages, with an average of 3,515 each, 31% higher than average.

Google last week issued figures with the British Retail Consortium, showing an explosion in mobile search.

 

Top 10 Sites in EU by Total Unique Visitors - March 2011
Total Europe Audience, Age 15+, Home and Work Locations
Properties	Total Unique Visitors (millions)	Total Pages Viewed (millions)	Average Minutes per Visitor
Total Internet : Total Audience	363.7	973,802	1557.9
Google Sites	330.3	94,752	180.9
Microsoft Sites	272.8	28,394	197.7
Facebook.com	234.6	109,921	285.7
Wikimedia Foundation Sites	156.9	2,222	11.8
Yahoo! Sites	144.2	9,914	74.1
eBay	107.1	14,648	60.7
Amazon Sites	88.7	2,612	16.1
Mail.ru Group	72.2	31,381	310.0
BitTorrent Network	72.2	23	0.1
The Mozilla Organization	70.9	438	5.8

Source: ComScore Media Metrix