Heavyweight champs of the web - top 10

The big boys that are eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! still dominate the internet in terms of users but the web 2.0 revolution and a major shift towards online advertising means these are exciting times, according to Magid Abraham, CEO of ComScore.

Microsoft has fought off competition from archrival Google to remain the largest web entity in the world, according to ComScore's latest league table, for December 2006 (right).

Top 10 online global brands, by site visitors

1. Microsoft Sites
2. Google Sites
3. Yahoo! Sites
4. Time Warner Network
5. eBay
6. Wikipedia Sites
7. Amazon Sites
8. Fox Interactive Media
9. CNET Networks (publisher of silicon.com)
10. Ask Network

Google cemented second place in 2006 but the acquisition and rapid growth of YouTube means 2007 could see Google overthrow Microsoft. On its own YouTube would still make ninth on the top 10, dislodging Ask from the list and pushing CNET Networks, publisher of silicon.com into 10th.

Abraham told silicon.com: "A lot of the metrics which used to be valid for web 1.0 are becoming obsolete, such as the notion of a page view. That's no longer the case now. You can see a fraction of a page, you can see server requests being made by the browser.

"If you have a window open for a news feed while you are carrying on with your work, there may be hundreds of news items being streamed and each one may be a request being made to a server. In the old world that would be counted as a page view but in the new world they are not but they are not nothing either."

Abraham said Google Earth is another example of an application making hundreds of server requests but the close correlation between what the browser is requesting and what the user is actually seeing is gone.

Mobile internet is also undermining the relevance of traditional methods of monitoring the popularity and reach of websites.

He said: "But let's not forget this whole industry is being funded by advertising and the business community needs to be able to assess the benefit."

As such, web monitoring companies such as ComScore have to update their metrics and models.

However, the top level trend, said Abraham, is the unrelenting move of advertising revenues from paper and television to online.

He said: "What a lot of companies have been waiting for with internet advertising is proof that it works. But the results are mind-boggling. There is no other medium in the world that has this kind of conversion power."