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Online video sites have a long way to go if they want to catch up with YouTube. You might say that it has become the Google of online video, even if Google has its own video service. Hitwise says that as of the end of last week, YouTube controlled 43 percent of Internet video traffic, the same percentage Google holds in search queries.

Click for Full Size Graph An increase of 160 percent over the past three months, those numbers put YouTube 42nd on the list of most visited sites out of the 500,000 sites that Hitwise tracks. A magic combination of social networking and video sharing also gives YouTube the second highest average visitor length at 13:20 per visitor - second only to Yahoo! Video, where 9.58 percent of video traffic spends an average of just over 15 minutes.

In just under two months, MySpace Videos went from zero market share to 24 percent. That represents a 3,825 percent increase since the video service launched on March 31. Either attention spans are lower or videos are shorter (or in shorter supply) because the average MySpace visitor only hangs out for a little over four and half minutes.

Before MySpace launched its video sharing service, the megapopular social networking site was delivering YouTube 20 percent of its video traffic. As of the week ending May 20, that has dropped to 1.5 percent.

"The rapid growth of online video sites in the past six months demonstrates a major shift in online behavior" said LeeAnn Prescott, senior research analyst at Hitwise.

"The Internet is quickly moving from static web pages to an environment rich with interaction and user generated multimedia content."

Other gainers in the online video sector were Grouper (up 765 percent) and Daily Motion (up 300 percent).

Here's the top ten and their market share:

1. YouTube 42.94%

2. MySpace Videos 24.22%

3. Yahoo! Video Search 9.58%

4. MSN Video Search 9.21%

5. Google Video Search 6.48%

6. AOL Video 4.28%

7. iFilm 2.28%

8. Grouper 0.69%

9. Daily Motion 0.22%

10. vSocial 0.09%

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