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The research agency found that sites such as Multimap.com and Streetmap.co.uk in the UK, Mappy.com in France and Map24.com in Germany, have experienced growth around the 300 percent mark over the last year.
In total, 2.5 million users visited an on-line map site during October 2001 and by July 2002 this had risen to 7.1 million, with the biggest increases occurring in June and July. Such expansion, said Nielsen//NetRatings, makes the on-line map sector one of the fastest growing Internet markets in Europe.
In both France and the UK, a mapping service is the most visited of all on-line travel sites. Mappy.com in France, for instance, has a unique audience of 947,000, while Multimap in the UK is more popular than the likes of Lastminute.com and Expedia.co.uk with a unique audience of 1,441,000 during August 2002.
Streetmap.co.uk is also popular with British Internet users. It came in ahead of the sites for airlines EasyJet and British Airways at number four in the top 10 visited travel sites in the UK with nearly 700,000 unique visitors.
Nielsen//NetRatings also found that such sites tend to be viewed more often by people when they are at work. According to the research company, the reach of several of the mapping sites was double for at-work surfers when compared to those surfing in the home. This, it said, indicated that workers are using these sites before going to meetings or for arranging to go out after work.
Although the popularity of mapping sites could be partly attributed to them being free, Tom Ewing, European analyst with Nielsen//NetRatings, said they have "enormous potential" to become revenue spinners. "These sites are a great example of the Internet making a practical difference in people's lives. Whilst at present, the majority of these sites provide their information for free, there is a possibility to generate revenue from them in the future," said Ewing.
Ewing also said that adding local information and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to mapping sites will make them even more attractive to Internet users and could lead to one of them becoming the travel equivalent of search engine Google, which is among the top five destinations of American Internet users. "Currently, there may be two or three local mapping sites in every market, but there is no key pan-European player as yet. If you're looking for the 'new Google', this sector is an interesting place to start," he remarked.
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