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10 Canadian Portals - Reach and Unique Visitors
Sites Categorized by Traffick
Source:
Media Metrix April 2000
Home/Work, Persons 2+
Media Metrix,
the global provider of Internet statistics, has released the top
10 Canadian portals for April 2000. See below for Traffick's commentary
on this month's numbers.
| Site |
Reach
%
|
Unique
Visitors (000s)
|
| TOTAL
DIGITAL MEDIA |
100 |
8,854 |
| Portals |
90.9 |
8,048
|
| MSN.COM
|
56.3 |
4,985 |
| YAHOO.COM |
56.0 |
4,954 |
| LYCOS.COM |
36.8 |
3,262 |
| NETSCAPE.COM |
27.5 |
2,434 |
| MSN.CA |
25.3 |
2,242 |
| SYMPATICO.CA |
23.8 |
2,106 |
| GO.COM |
19.6 |
1,731 |
| AOL.COM |
18.9 |
1,677 |
| ALTAVISTA.COM |
16.9 |
1,496 |
| YAHOO.CA |
15.5 |
1,369 |
|
|
|
TRAFFICK
ANALYSIS
From this glimpse
at the leading Canadian portals, it looks as if MSN snuck up on
Yahoo! north of the border. We've been aware for some time that
MSN has remarkably good homegrown Canadian news content - Now Magazine,
The Sports Network, CBC Newsworld, and much more good local stuff.
It also looks
like those browser defaults have a long shelf life, as Netscape.com
is also a strong contender. Netscape's brand is stronger globally
than many people suspect, and it looks as if AOL has every intention
of using the Netscape name to promote the Netcenter portal site
and even seems to be planning to use it as an ISP brand in Europe.
Globally, MSN
also has a major traffic driver in Hotmail, the most widely recognized
web-based email. Thus we'd expect MSN to continue strong - at least
on paper - due to the browser defaults and Hotmail exit traffic.
We believe
the Lycos numbers are partly attributable to their recent partnership
with Sympatico, which is Canada's leading ISP. That Lycos is in
third place is quite frankly surprising, and one wonders if it can
last. Local media watchers are disappointed that BCE Inc's Sympatico
has fumbled its portal partnerships to finally wind up with the
favorite of no one in particular... Lycos. We're likely to hear
more from both AOL.com and AOL as a proprietary network and ISP.
This year AOL had a major TV ad blitz and on-campus CD distribution
blitz. We'd expect them to crank up the volume in the fall. They're
also piloting a high-speed access service in a small northern Ontario
town.
Conspicuous
by their absence in the top 10 are Excite.ca, a joint venture between
Excite@Home and Rogers Media, the main Canadian cable company; Canoe.ca,
a popular news service owned by Quebecor, and Canada.com, owned
by Hollinger. But all of these are lurking not too far behind. Hollinger's
print edition of the National Post ran a full-color spread called
Portals for Newbies recently, trying to promote Canada.com with
a tutorial approach to news personalization.
Finally, Altavista.com
shows that it still has a strong "legacy" name worldwide and is
associated with searching the web by many net veterans. Can it last?
Without bold moves by Altavista, we wonder if it can. In two years'
time, the same people may have switched permanently to Google. The
impact of Altavista Free ISP is probably being felt in these numbers
- it's a very good dialup service with access numbers throughout
Canada - but one does wonder if the Free ISP will peter out over
time.
Here's a thought.
Many of Canada's public universities are needing to raise more money
from the private sector as government policy has shifted away from
funding postsecondary education. But for now, some institutions
are really hurting for benefactors. Wouldn't it be a win-win situation
for MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Altavista, Excite, Sympatico, etc. to donate
substantial sums for new computers, Internet services and even for
general endowments? Campus officials probably wouldn't balk at a
little reciprocation to promote the companies' products and services
to students.
If you spot
any factual errors or off-base interpretations of the above data,
do contact us. We welcome your feedback!
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