YouTube continues video dominance

US visits to video sharing sites in May recorded a 60 per cent market share for YouTube

YouTube continued to hold its huge lead over competing video services, claiming a larger share of the online video market than the next 64 sites combined. 

A survey by research firm Hitwise measuring US visits to video sharing sites in May recorded a 60 per cent market share for YouTube. 

MySpace came second with a 16.08 per cent market share, followed by Google Video with 7.81 per cent.

Google, which acquired YouTube for $1.65bn in October 2006, had nearly 68 per cent of all online video traffic in May. The survey measured only website traffic, not embedded videos or streams.

YouTube is also growing faster than competing sites. The study found that YouTube's share of all US web traffic had grown by 70 per cent since May 2006, while the 64 other top video sites had grown by just eight per cent.

YouTube is benefiting from its parent company as well. Hitwise found that the amount of traffic being directed to video sharing sites from search engines has climbed by 300 per cent since May 2006.

Hitwise research director Lee Ann Prescott noted that traffic from search engines, including Google, now accounts for one fifth of all traffic to YouTube.