With tax day right around the corner and more citizens applying online for subsidized health insurance before the deadline passed, 86 million Americans visited Government websites in February 2014. This was up nearly 2 million unique visitors compared to January despite the shorter month. The top destination was IRS.gov, with 26 million Americans visiting the website and averaging over four visits to the site during the month, searching for information and perhaps filing taxes early.
Nearly 3 million Americans visited HealthCare.gov this February, averaging 23 minutes spent on the site per person ahead of the March 31 enrollment deadline for the health care marketplace. And while many of the top websites in the Government category were branches and agencies of the federal government, three of the top 10 websites were for states: California (6.6 million unique visitors), New York (4.2 million) and Florida (2.8 million).
TOP U.S. GOVERNMENT WEBSITES BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE IN FEBRUARY
| Rank | Brand Or Channel | Unique Audience (000) | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|---|
| – | Government | 86,072,000 | 0:34:15 |
| 1 | U.S. Internal Revenue Service | 26,149,000 | 0:17:04 |
| 2 | U.S. National Institutes of Health | 11,108,000 | 0:07:31 |
| 3 | CA.gov | 6,641,000 | 0:19:16 |
| 4 | U.S. Social Security | 5,315,000 | 0:15:12 |
| 5 | NY.gov | 4,225,000 | 0:14:21 |
| 6 | U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention | 3,541,000 | 0:04:54 |
| 7 | HealthCare.gov | 2,965,000 | 0:23:16 |
| 8 | U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs | 2,751,000 | 0:16:21 |
| 9 | FL.us | 2,750,000 | 0:18:04 |
| 10 | Whitehouse.gov | 2,669,000 | 0:04:58 |
| Read as: During February 2014, 26 million unique visitors accessed IRS.gov in the U.S. and spent 17 minutes on average surfing the site. Source: Nielsen NetView. |
Looking at overall activity on the web in February, 206 million Americans were active online, and averaged 29 hours 26 minutes surfing the web in their browsers. Google was once again the most visited web brand, attracting 154 million unique visitors to its websites.
February’s monthly time spent on most websites grew despite the shorter month, led by Facebook. Visitors to the social media site spent over eight hours per person on average during the month, up almost a half hour compared to January 2014.
TOP 1O U.S. WEB BRANDS BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE IN FEBRUARY 2014
| Rank | Website | Unique Audience | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 154,351,000 | 2:03:42 | |
| 2 | 119,885,000 | 8:01:11 | |
| 3 | Yahoo | 119,812,000 | 2:01:49 |
| 4 | MSN/WindowsLive/Bing | 119,195,000 | 1:25:09 |
| 5 | YouTube | 104,878,000 | 1:51:16 |
| 6 | Microsoft | 81,465,000 | 0:51:08 |
| 7 | 79,979,000 | 1:48:23 | |
| 8 | Amazon | 76,437,000 | 0:42:26 |
| 9 | Wikipedia | 64,881,000 | 0:28:39 |
| 10 | 58,983,000 | 0:12:36 | |
| Read as: During February 2014, 154 million unique visitors accessed Google’s websites in the U.S. and spent an average of 2 hours 3 minutes per person surfing Google sites. Source: Nielsen NetView. |
