Similarweb Momentum Awards 2016 US Category Winners

Similarweb Momentum Awards 2016

The Similarweb Momentum Awards recognize websites in the U.S. that have demonstrated exceptional advancement in their online category in 2016.
Our 39 winners in 13 categories have successfully improved their Website Ranking – an algorithmic score that sorts over 80 million sites by their total traffic and engagement metrics. (Scroll to the bottom for our methodology.)
Congratulations to all of our Momentum Award winners!

Online Marketplaces

Up against big-name sites such as samsclub.com and kmart.com, wish.com made the highest jump in its Similarweb Ranking for the Online Marketplaces category.
Over the past couple of years, wish.com witnessed tremendous growth from 7.6M visitors in December 2014 to 38.2M visitors in December 2016. In 2016, the online-only retailer had an 85% increase in total traffic and an unusually high mobile web traffic share of 77%.
Along with its spike in traffic, wish.com showed impressive engagement rates: a 130% increase in page views and an increase in pages per visit from ~7.5 to 9.4.

Consumer Electronics

Each of the sites that showed the most improvement in this category also ranks within the top five most visited Consumer Electronics sites.
For example, bestbuy.com which leads the ranking of the top 100 sites in the category, still managed to improve its Similarweb Ranking to earn a second place here as well.

Apparel

Strong mobile web traffic was a common trend that swept the Apparel category in 2016.
First-place winner rue21.com and third-place winner torrid.com saw over 80% of their traffic come from the mobile web. Victoriasecret.com, the third most visited apparel site achieved the second most improved Similarweb Ranking, showcasing the brand’s continued commitment to serving both online and offline customers.
Other Apparel category sites that enjoyed a jump in Similarweb Ranking were footlocker.com, hm.com, and ae.com.

Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)

The number of online visitors in the U.S. travel industry (top 100 travel sites) reached 4.7 billion visitors last year, with our top winners owning a 40% share.
The most significant metric for the 2016 OTA winners was their marked improvement in desktop engagement. First place winner tripadvisor.com increased its pageviews by 105% this year, while travelocity.com and expedia.com increased their pageviews by 7% and 6% respectively.
Other OTAs worthy of mention are kayak.com, hotwire.com, and priceline.com.

Hotel Chains

Second place category winner choicehotels.com experienced an impressive year-over-year increase in mobile web traffic; it accounts for 70% of traffic to choicehotels.com, compared to a less than 60% share for marriott.com and ihg.com.
Other runners-up for the Hotel Chains category include hilton.com, starwoodhotels.com, and hyatt.com.

Hotel Booking Services

SEO strategy played a pivotal role for the top Hotel Booking sites this year. This is best reflected in Airbnb.com‘s whopping 78% improvement in organic search traffic last year, representing 23% of the site’s total traffic.
Key players that also improved their Similarweb Ranking were vrbo.com, booking.com, and homeaway.com.

Airlines

One of the major Airline sites, aa.com, shares the stage with two low-cost airlines, jetblue.com and spirit.com. Both the budget carriers showed increased visitor engagement on their sites, especially in H2 2016. Jetblue.com increased its desktop pageviews by 10%, while spirit.com increased its desktop pageviews by an impressive 113%.
Other sites that improved their Similarweb Ranking in this category were allegiantair.com, southwest.com, and alaskaair.com.

Take a deeper dive into each of our category insights:
Download the Similarweb 2016 Highlights Report.

Insurance

Taking a look at our three Insurance category winners, it is evident that this category is a concentrated one. The three sites that excelled in their Similarweb Ranking also represent the three biggest sites in the overall category and are responsible for generating 53% of all traffic to the category’s top ten.

Banking

First place winner citi.com displayed the biggest improvement in its 2016 Similarweb Ranking, while also appearing as the fifth most visited site in the Banking category.
The two other winners, regions.com and navyfederal.org, rank outside of the top ten in terms of total site visits but showed exceptional improvement in their digital ecosystem.
Other noteworthy sites in this category include bbt.com, capitalone.com, and ally.com.

Car Buying

Most Car Buying sites get their traffic from organic search. In 2016, our second place winner autotrader.com aligned itself with the rest of the industry, by boosting its SEO efforts and reaping the organic benefits. Organic search replaced direct traffic as the site’s main source and is now responsible for 40% of total traffic.

News & Media

The 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign was, without a doubt, the highlight for this year’s News and Media websites category. Politically slanted or oriented news sites proved to be the biggest winners.
First place winner fivethirtyeight.com saw a remarkable increase of over 300% in total traffic, while realclearpolitics.com’s organic search traffic almost quadrupled, together with an increase in total visits by 211%.

Tech News

First place winner ccm.net leveraged SEO with 89% of its total desktop traffic coming through organic search. In contrast, Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) received 70% of its traffic from direct visits, indicating a loyal audience base.
The Tech News sites that also displayed a significant improvement in their Similarweb Ranking include idigitaltimes.com, arstechnica.com, and gizmodo.com.

Business News

The Business News category leans more heavily on traffic coming from referrals than other categories. Each of the winners in this category significantly increased their referral traffic in 2016.
Our first place winner bloomberg.com increased its referral traffic by 58%, now comprising almost a quarter of the site’s overall traffic.

Similarweb Momentum Awards 2016 – US Winners List

Methodology
The Similarweb Momentum Awards recognize the websites in the U.S. that demonstrated exceptional advancement in their online category, based on the Similarweb Ranking. The Similarweb Ranking is an algorithmic score that sorts over 80 million global sites by their total traffic and engagement metrics.
Thirteen categories were reviewed this year: Online Marketplaces, Consumer Electronics, Apparel, Online Travel Agencies, Hotel Chains, Hotel Booking Services, Airlines, Insurance, Banking*, Car Buying, News & Media, Tech News, and Business News.
The winners were identified by conducting a year-over-year (2016 vs. 2015) analysis according to their change in Similarweb ranking. The scoring methodology utilized was a weighted point system that gave preference to changes that happened closest to the top, i.e., a change in rank in the top 10 was scored higher than a change in rank in the lower 50. We considered only those companies whose final Similarweb rank was within the top 100 sites in their category.
The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners were then identified in each category, resulting in 39 award winners in total for the U.S.
*The scores for two domains: citibankonline.com and citi.com were merged and ranked as one domain entity.
Download the 2016 Similarweb Highlights Report