Today, Hitwise is issuing a news release about the growth of the Entertainment category. In doing our research, we noticed that YouTube looks set to overtake BBC.co.uk in share of UK visits within a matter of weeks.

The Entertainment category overtook the Shopping and Classifieds category in share of weekly UK Internet visits for the first time (in the past two years) in the week ending 26th May 2007. The Entertainment category has maintained the lead throughout June and so will overtake retail websites as the #3 most popular category (after Search Engines and Adult) in June. In preparing the news release we looked closely at the top ranked Entertainment websites and noticed that YouTube is rapidly closing the gap with the Beeb.

Last week, BBC.co.uk ranked #14 among All Categories of websites with 0.82% of all UK Internet visits compared to YouTube's #25 ranking with 0.81% of UK Internet visits. The gap between the two websites is closing rapidly. Last week, BBC had a 1.6% lead on YouTube in share of UK visits, down from 37% three months ago and 131% six months ago.

BBC.co.uk has been the #1 ranked Entertainment website each week for the past two years and YouTube has held the #2 position since October 2006.

Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins is VP of Research for Hitwise UK. This piece was first posted on Hitwise Analyst blog here.