Nielsen watches just how much time people spend on the sites of the top web brands in the world. It makes for some interesting viewing. Just seeing the numbers from the chart below makes it obvious why some sites have the success they do and raises questions about some others. Here is one of the Nielsen charts (there are a few others not pictured).

There are no real surprises on the list although many of the ‘holding’ companies like AOL and IAC of top web properties seem out of place. They are not their because of there for their overall brand but more so because of individual properties and theirs. But hey, get the exposure any way you can right?

One piece of data that jumps out is the amount of time that people spend on Facebook relative to the rest of these brands. Now the trick for Facebook is to turn that captive audience into something that will make money. Despite have 1/3 the number of visitors the time spent on the site is still twice that of Google (if my math is correct).

Of course, numbers like these don’t tell the story completely because people are using Facebook for far different reasons than Google. Google is a place for people to get info, make decisions and, in the process, keep the printing presses on Google’s money printing operation rolling 24/7.

Another number to consider is the relatively low amount of time spent on NewsCorp sites. You know NewsCorp. They create all of that fancy, in-depth content that no one else can and should take hours and hours to consume. I wonder when the stuff finally hits the fan on paywalls and whether Google will index that content, if we will even see NewsCorp. on this list anymore.

So what do you pull out of this information? Let’s hear your point of view.