Web measurement company comScore, has acquired Certifica, a similar web measurement company based in Latin America. ComScore says the acquisition will help buid its presence in Latin America. ComScore did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.

Based in Santiago, Chile, Certifica was founded in 2000 and publishes analytics and statistics on Internet usage in Latin America. The sites measured by Certifica will be available for inclusion (on an opt-in basis) in comScore’s Media Metrix 360 measurement product, which combines panel-based audience measurement data and Web site analytics data to provide a more comprehensive view of activity.

ComScore also acquired mobile analytics company M:Metrics in 2008 to broaden its measurement of the mobile web.

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Bing launched to the public on May 31, when Microsoft held 8.0% search marketshare. Over the course of June and July, the site has gained nearly a full percentage point — it’s up to 8.9%, and growth was actually higher for July than for June, when the site was getting all of its launch attention. Of course, Bing’s marketshare still pales in comparison to Google’s dominant 64.7%, but at least Microsoft is heading in the right direction.

Once again, it looks like Bing’s gain comes at Yahoo’s expense, at least to some extent. Since May, Yahoo has dropped from 20.1% to 19.3%. Google has dropped a more modest .3%, from 65% to 64.7%. We saw a similar pattern last month, when we pointed out that Yahoo was losing marketshare both from below (Bing) and above (Google).

Since then though, the landscape has changed dramatically: Yahoo search will soon be powered by Bing. When the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal was announced Yahoo EVP Hillary Schneider discounted the impact of this market share erosion, stating, “seeing Bing as a live experience was a nice assurance but did not change our rationale or timing.” But it’s hard to believe that Bing’s strong start didn’t have an impact on the deal.

Once that deal comes to fruition Bing will have to face the real test: can it continue to take market share away from Google, or will it simply continue to eat away at itself as users move from Yahoo’s portal to the Bing homepage?

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The cause, of course, is the Michael Jackson effect — media organizations around the world dedicated huge amounts of coverage to the pop star’s tragic death on June 25, and many people turned to the web to learn more. Other breaking news that month, including the Iranian election controversy, also likely contributed to the growth seen by news properties.

Hulu, which has ranked as the third most popular video site in the United States for the past few months, has dropped down to seventh. Likewise, Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, has dropped from second to fifth.

So who took their place? Video search engine Blinkx jumped from sixth place in May with 300,641 views to fourth overall with over 623,000 (Note:all figures in 000’s). Microsoft also saw a big jump, rising from fifth place in May with 310,560 overall streams, to third place in June, with 695,661 streams (much of this gain was likely due to increased traffic to MSN and MSNBC). Turner, the parent company of CNN, also saw its video views nearly double.

Finally there’s Viacom, the media conglomerate that includes Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, and BET. Viacom vaulted from seventh place in May with 281,368 views to second place in June, with a whopping 773,554. Again, much of this can likely be attributed to the Michael Jackson news that was featured prominently on MTV, but Nickelodeon also saw strong traffic, which may be related to the summer season when kids generally watch more TV.

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After experiencing torrid growth during the first months of the year, Twitter took a breather in May. According to new comScore data released today, Twitter had 17.6 million U.S. visitors in May, which is only 3.5 percent increase from the 17 million U.S. visitors comScore registered in April. One month does not make a trend, but this is a screeching slowdown from the 82 percent month-over-month growth Twitter had in April and 131 percent growth in March. Recent Compete data also points to a similar slowdown in growth.

These are just U.S. numbers. (ComScore measured 32 million unique visitors worldwide in April). But up until now Twitter’s global growth rate has closely followed its U.S. growth rate. Remember, these numbers only reflect visitors to Twitter.com, not the actual number of registered or active users, which is much less. By one count, Twitter had about 11.5 million registered accounts in May. And probably about half of all consumption of Twitter messages occurs in mobile and desktop clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck, which comScore doesn’t capture.

The past few months, more and more traffic was driven to Twitter as politicians, TV journalists, celebrities and cute cats discovered the service and promoted it. Many people visited Twitter out of curiosity and maybe never returned. The measure of Twitter’s success will be how many of those grazers become active users. A short-term breather is to be expected after the astounding growth Twitter went through earlier this year. But if Twitter can’t convince mainstream users to make it a daily habit, this one-month breather could turn into a longer stretch where the service tries to find its natural audience.

What do you think, has Twitter peaked?

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Despite the avalanche of mobile apps that let people access local information, the mobile browser is still the king when it comes to finding out what’s going on in your city or neighborhood. People across the board are using their mobile phones to look up local info. ComScore reported today that the number of people in the U.S. who sought local content on mobile devices grew 51 percent from March 2008 to March 2009. The report also shows that the mobile browser is the most popular way consumers find local information, with 20.7 million browser users in March 2009, up 34 percent versus a year ago. Only about half as many people (11.3 million) use downloaded apps to find local data.

But downloaded apps did exhibit the strongest growth, up 83 percent versus a year ago. I’m sure the growth of the iPhone had something to do with that. What’s interesting is that despite the popularity of local content apps like those from Yelp and CitySearch, apps still remain the least popular method for mobile access of local information, with 11.3 million users in March. ComScore says that slightly more consumers use SMS for obtaining local information (11.7 million users) than apps, but the browser is still by far the most popular way for consumers to find info on local restaurants, bars, businesses and more.

Drilling down into the local content categories, the number of people accessing online directories has seen the greatest increase during the past year (73 %), followed by restaurants (70 %), maps (63 %) and movies (60%).

(Photo credit: Flickr/kballard).

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There are now 231.5 million Websites according to Netcraft. But last year the number of new sites added to the Web slowed down to 29.9 million, from 48.7 million in 2007. Royal Pingdom went through Netcraft’s server surveys to come up with the chart above, which shows the increase or decrease in the number of Websites for every year going back to 1996.

The growth of the Web so far can be broken down into two five-year cycles, where every year the growth rate gets bigger until there is an economic downturn, when the growth rate takes a breather. In 2001 and 2002 the growth slowed and even went into negative territory, and again in 2008 there was another slowdown in the number of sites added to the Web. It stands to reason that the number of new sites will ebb and flow with the global economy, but it is not clear that there is any direct correlation. For instance, so far in 2009 we’ve added a whopping 46 million sites, many of them Chinese blogs. The total for the year will almost surely be much greater than the 2007 increase, and is already larger than all the sites added in 2008.

Does that mean the global economy is already on a rebound or simply that countries like China and Russia are embracing the Web in a big way? These numbers also raise the question of how many sites does the world need—500 million, one billion, ten billion? Maybe the upper limit is the number of people who are on the Web, which is estimated between 1 billion worldwide (comScore) and 1.6 billion right now. Maybe it is more. How many Websites do you have?

Here are the top countries by Internet population according to comScore.  All the growth is coming from China, Russia, Brazil, and India. (Growth is compared from July, 2008 to March, 2009 for an apples-to-apples comparison because comScore changed its methodology slightly in July, 2008).

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Mobile Web usage is still a nascent activity, but comScore put out some data on the information-consumption habits of consumers in the U.S. The number of people who access news and information daily on their mobile phones doubled from 10.8 million in January, 2008 to 22.4 million in January, 2009.

The second most popular mobile activity was social networking, with 9.3 million daily mobile users (although for some reason this number also includes blog access). While social networking is only half as popular as reading news, it is growing four times as fast, up from 1.8 million users a year ago.

An estimated 63 million people accessed news and information on their mobile phones at least once during the month. Of those, about a third did so via a downloaded application rather than a mobile browser, with the most popular downloaded app being maps. SMS-based search proved even more popular (with 14.1 million monthly users versus 8.2 million for downloaded maps.

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The number of people on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore. The actual number is probably higher than that (Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 billion Web surfers worldwide as of June 30, 2008). In any case, only between 15 and 22 percent of the world’s population is on the Internet. We have a long way to go.

Using the comScore numbers, here is the breakdown by country and region (in unique visitors as of December, 2008; some of the numbers are rounded):

Top 15 countries, by Internet population:

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million
11. Canada: 21.8 million
12. Italy: 20.8 million
13. Spain: 17.9 million
14. Mexico: 12.5 million
15. Netherlands: 11.8 million

Worldwide Internet Audience

• Asia Pacific: 416 million (41.3%)
• Europe: 283 million (28.0%)
• North America: 185 million (18.4%)
• Latin America: 75 million (7.4%)
• Middle East & Africa: 49 million (4.8%)

(Photo by Joe Shlabotnik).

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After a tepid start, online holiday sales seem to be picking up a bit. Online sales on Cyber Monday as measured by comScore were a healthy $846 million, up 15 percent from last year’s Cyber Monday. Online sales since Thanksgiving are up 12 percent to $2.4 billion. But overall online sales in November of $12 billion are still down 2 percent.

Can sales make up the difference over the next five weeks? As the chart above shows, holiday sales so far in 2008 (the red bars) are struggling to keep up with the levels we saw in 2007 (the dark blue bars). Maybe consumers have just been postponing purchases longer than usual, but now that the U.S. is officially in a recession that knowledge will likely have a psychological impact on people’s willingness to splurge. (I love how the recession news didn’t come out until after the Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend).

Hitwise also offers some insight into what happened on Cyber Monday in terms of Website traffic to retail sites. Overall, among the top 500 retail sites, traffic was down one percent on Cyber Monday. But online-only sites saw a traffic increase of 5 percent (versus a 4 percent decline for the sites of brick-and-mortar stores).

In the fight between Amazon and Walmart.com for online holiday dominance, Amazon came out on top with traffic increasing 21 percent on Cyber Monday. Walmart.com was the second most visited retail site.

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Yahoo has conducted some rather self-serving research in conjunction with ComScore and Media Contacts that concludes the obvious: most consumers care intensely about only a small number of websites, and it’s these websites that make for the best places to advertise.

After analyzing over 12 million “passively observed site-user paired data points” from ComScore and surveying 800 users, the report came up with the following statistics:

• People visit on average 85 sites over the course of a month; they are “deeply engaged” with only about 1.5 of them
• People visit these 1.5 sites almost every day they go online
• People have been visiting these 1.5 sites for approximately 4.5 years
• People spend more than 1/3 of their time online at these 1.5 sites
• People are 13% more willing to pay attention to ads, and 200% as likely to find trustworthy information, at these 1.5 sites

The report calls these 1.5 sites “starting points” and asserts that they can be “portals or homepages or search engines”. So let’s see here…portals, homepages, search engines…at least 4.5 years…what the goodness could they could be referring to? Oh yea, Yahoo.

Since people are “13 percent more likely to pay attention to ads in ’starting points’ versus ‘non-starting points’” and “deep engagement with content can lead to deeper engagement in advertising,” the report implies that sites like Yahoo are “ideal location[s] to reach [people] with targeted messages”. The take home message: consumers love Yahoo so advertise to them there.

You gotta love these unbiased, scientific studies.

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Click image above for a larger view. Comscore has released its May search market share numbers (prior data through April is here).

Key points: Google and Yahoo edged higher in search share to 61.8% and 20.4%, respectively. That’s the first up month for Yahoo this year.

Microsoft dropped from 9.1% to 8.5% for the month. It’s important to note that Microsoft’s new Cash Back search program didn’t go live until May 22, so it will be interesting to see how they do next month.

Search volume is increasing rapidly – about 18% per year. Notes from a report by J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan:

• According to the data, total US core search volume increased 16% Y/Y in May vs. 18% Y/Y growth in April. Thus far in 2Q, comScore shows17% Y/Y growth in total US core searches vs. 18% Y/Y growth in 1Q.
• Google domestic core search market share increased to 61.8% in May from 61.6% in April. Thus far in 2Q, Google domestic core search volume was up 29% Y/Y vs. a 31% increase in 1Q.
• Yahoo domestic core search market share increased to 20.6% in May from 20.4% in April. Thus far in 2Q, Yahoo! domestic core search volume was down 2% Y/Y, consistent with 1Q performance.
• MSN domestic core search market share declined to 8.5% in May from 9.1% in April. Thus far in 2Q, MSN domestic core search volume was up 7% Y/Y, slightly below 1Q’s 9% Y/Y growth.
• AOL May domestic core search market share declined to 4.5% from 4.6% in April. Thus far in 2Q, AOL domestic core search volume was down 2% Y/Y vs. 1% growth in 1Q.
• Ask Network domestic core search market share increased slightly to 4.5% in May from 4.3% in April. Thus far in 2Q, Ask Network domestic core search volume was up 9% Y/Y vs. an 11% Y/Y increase in
  1Q.

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MobiLensTM, a syndicated monthly online survey that captures overall mobile phone usage, including device information, data usage, media consumption and demographic characteristics of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users. MobiLens is available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

MeterDirectTM, the industry’s first on-device meter that passively measures the mobile Internet behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists. The M:Metrics metering technology is compatible with more than 280 device models. MeterDirect is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

M:AdTM, the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising that continuously monitors clickable display advertising from a broad representative set of mobile Web destinations to reveal leading advertisers across a variety of market segments. M:Ad is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

ComScore is a publicly traded company with $87 million in revenues last year. It expects the M:Metrics business to be profitable by the end of 2008 on an EBITDA basis. M:Metrics reveneus are forecasted to reach $11 to $12 million this year, and are expected to contribute $6.5 million to $7 million towards comScore’s revenues for the full year. Founders Will Hodgman and Seamus McAtee will join comScore.

M:Metrics, which is based in Seattle, was founded in 2004. It has raised $18 million from Prism Venture Partners, i-Hatch Ventures, and WPP.

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Google maintained its dominance over its nearest competitor, Fox Interactive Media (FIM) who remained a distant second on 4.4%, up from 4.2% in September.

Notably the top ten companies per videos viewed continue to make up less than 50% (48.9%), indicating that the long tail for video viewing remains long, particularly considering that tenth placed Break came in a 0.5%.

YouTube’s traffic looked better again when considering video destinations (as opposed to videos viewed) with Google sites growing to 138 million unique visitors or 41.8% of the market, up from 39.4% in September. FIM sites also showed healthy growth, hitting 25.4% up from 22.6% in September.

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And according to a survey conducted by Shop.org, 72 million Americans are expected to shop online today. It is not clear from the survey if those people will actually be making purchases, or just browsing.

CrunchGear lists some of today’s CyberDeals here. Even Google Checkout is getting in on the deal action, offering discounts at online retailers who use Checkout. BowlingBall.com or Cufflinks Depot, anyone? I didn’t think so.

Update: Seems like some e-tailers can’t handle the online stampede. Yahoo’s checkout system is suffering outages, and Sears’ site is down altogether. (Anyone noticing any other outages or slowdowns today, please report in comments).

Update 2: ComScore reports that online sales for Cyber Monday came in at $733 million, based on its panel.

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Here are my takeaways. MySpace is still growing at a healthy 23 percent, despite its size. But Facebook is coming on fast, with 129 percent growth. Notice also the strong showing by Bebo (growing 83 percent) versus the lackluster U.S. growth of Hi5 (3 percent) and the decline of Xanga (negative 55 percent).

In blogging platforms, Blogger is beating Six Apart on both absolute numbers (32 million visitors versus 13 million) and growth (55 percent versus 44 percent). In the doldrums territory, you’ve got Windows Live Spaces (with a one percent decline) and Yahoo Groups (four percent decline). And in the you-ought-to-seriously-think-of-shutting-this-down territory, there is Lycos Tripod (23 percent decline), MSN Groups (36 percent decline), and Yahoo 360 (’nuff said).

Here is a more comprehensive list of social sites ranked by total number of visitors. It includes sites where comScore could not calculate a growth rate because it did not have enough data for September, 2006. Some sites that stand out on this list, having come out of nowhere in the past year, include Wordpress.com (with 11.9 million monthly visitors), Freewebs (with 6.6 million), BuzzNet (with 4.4 million),and Kaboodle (with 2.5 million). (Update: Also, you will notice that Google’s social networking site Orkut isn’t even on the list. That is because while it had 24.6 million visitors worldwide in September, 2007, Orkut only attracted 503,000 visitors in the U.S.).

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Comscore had revenues of $66.3 million in 2006, and about $5.6 million in income from operations.

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