European Web users prefer local sites

The same four American brands appeared in the top 30 Web sites in Britain, France and Germany in November, according to MMXI Europe, a joint venture of U.S. Internet measurement service Media Metrix, French market research company Ipsos and Germany's GFK research institute.

MMXI tracked nearly 3,000 home computer users in each of the three countries between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30.

Web sites offered by Yahoo, America Online, Microsoft and Microsoft's MSN appeared in every country's top 10 list, as they had in MMXI's first monthly survey in October, its research showed.

But domestic services were most popular in all three cases. Germany's T-Online and France's Wanadoo, the Internet access providers owned respectively by telecommunications giants Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, were the most visited sites in their home markets.

Freeserve, the free Internet service provider controlled by U.K. retailer Dixons, was Britain's favorite.

U.S.-based Yahoo, which held the No. 1 spot in Britain in October, ranked as the second-most-visited site in all three countries in November, the study found.

Such statistics, which are used to judge the habits of millions of Internet users, are relied on by advertisers and often financial investors to determine which sites are drawing the largest advertising and shopping audiences.

MMXI said it expected its next survey, in January, to show a gain in popularity for e-commerce sites in Europe, which happened in the United States in the run-up to Christmas.

T-Online attracted 68.5 percent of Germany's estimated 5.3 million monthly Internet users in November, as it had in October. Wanadoo lured 51.3 percent of the estimated 2.3 million French Internet users last month, up from 48 percent in October. Freeserve attracted 35.8 percent of Britain's estimated 7.8 million Net users, up from 34 percent in October.

Of the U.S. services, Yahoo drew 33.5 percent of the British audience, 41.1 percent of the French market and 32.6 percent of German users.

AOL, the dominant Internet access provider in the United States, was only No. 3 in Germany and a lackluster No. 5 in Britain and France.

MMXI's study of Web surfing in Europe is comparable to its closely watched statistics on U.S. Internet use.

It showed German home computer users to be the keenest in Europe, going online an average 10.4 separate days a month. Britons spent 8.8 days and the French 8.6 days online.

While Americans hook up to the Web for a comparable 11 days a month, they still spend much longer surfing than Europeans, staying online an average 513 minutes per month against Europe's 253 minutes.