By K.C. Jones
InformationWeek
U.S. Internet users went to question-and-answer Web sites almost nine times as much last month as they did in February 2006, according to recent figures.
U.S. visits to question-and-answer Web sites increased by 889% during that two-year period, and they rose 118% from the second week in March last year compared with the second week in March this year, according to Hitwise.
Yahoo Answers ranks first among such sites, with WikiAnswers close behind. Yahoo held just over 74% of the market share, compared with about 18% for WikiAnswers, which launched in June, Hitwise reported. Answerbag placed third with only 4.42% of the market share in the question-and-answer category, Hitwise said.
U.S. visits to WikiAnswers increased 125% from the week it launched to last week, according to Hitwise.
Fifty-two percent of all U.S. visits to the top five Q&A sites last week came from women, according to Hitwise. Twenty-four percent of the visitors were between 35 and 44 years old, while 21% were between 25 and 34, Hitwise found.
New visitors accounted for 52% of traffic to the question-and-answer Web sites, and Askville received the highest amount of new traffic (93%), according to Hitwise.
Heather Dougherty, research director for Hitwise, said that Internet users are turning more to Web sites that offer answers from online communities made up of experts and enthusiasts on any given topic.
"The popularity of user-generated media has helped to establish a category for social knowledge where consumers can obtain answers from a single aggregated source developed through others asking similar questions," she said in a statement.
See original article on InformationWeek
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