YouTube is poised to topple the BBC’s flagship website as the most popular online media destination in Britain.

According to Hitwise, the web analysts, bbc.co.uk has been the most-visited entertainment site in Britain every month for two years, but will be overtaken by YouTube “in a matter of weeks”.

The impending demotion of bbc.co.uk looks to underscore the power of YouTube’s “web 2.0” model, which harnesses user-created content alongside commercial partnerships and seeks to make money out of advertising.

The continued rise of YouTube, which handles more than 100 million clips a day, may also vindicate Google’s decision to buy it for $1.6 billion last year. Google pressed on with the acquisition despite YouTube failing to turn a profit and huge legal concerns over piracy. YouTube faces a $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom, the media giant, over alleged boot-legging of clips on its site.

However, the Hitwise figures do not take into account BBC sites that do not fall under the main bbc.co.uk domain, which include pages from the broadcaster’s news, sports and weather services that take addresses such as news. bbc.co.uk.

According to Nielsen/ NetRatings, another research group, when the entire family of BBC websites is included, the corporation outstrips YouTube by a large margin, attracting about 16 million users in April in the UK – about twice the figure achieved by YouTube.

Even so, Nielsen also suggests that YouTube is gaining fast on the BBC. According to the researcher, the BBC’s entire online audience grew by 6 per cent in the six months to April, compared with nearly 50 per cent growth for YouTube.

According to Hitwise, bbc.co.uk had a 1.6 per cent lead on YouTube last week in terms of share of UK visits, down from 37 per cent three months ago and 131 per cent at the beginning of the year.

The Hitwise figures show that the share of British internet visits accounted for by bbc.co. uk has continued to grow and was up by 13 per cent in May compared with the same month a year earlier. Yet that pace was easily outstripped by the increase in YouTube’s share of traffic, which has increased by 140 per cent in the past six months and has surged sevenfold in the year to May.

YouTube could receive a further boost from the news that its content will shortly be made available on Apple’s hotly anticipated iPhone, which will be launched in America at the end of this month.

To extend its reach from PCs to mobile phones, the site is encoding clips in a new format designed to boost quality and save battery life when they are viewed over wireless devices.

This week, YouTube also unveiled nine country-specific sites, including a UK version, with customised search, local language interfaces, and charts showing the most popular domestic content.

According to Hitwise, bbc.co.uk was the fourteenth-most popular site overall in the UK last week. YouTube, which has been the second-most popular entertainment site since October, came in at No 25 in the overall rankings. Google.co.uk, the search engine, was first and eBay, the auction site, second.

The hit list

1 bbc.co.uk

2 YouTube

3 BBC Weather Centre

4 RuneScape

5 Windows Media

Source: Hitwise

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