It’s true! Based on the new Nielson/Netratings system of measuring website popularity, AOL was at the top of the list:

1. AOL
2. Yahoo
3. MSN/Windows Live
4. Myspace
5. Google
6. Ebay
7. Microsoft
8. Electronic Arts
9. Apple
10. Youtube

So what does this mean? Well, it means that more people actually use AOL.com than any other site, but it doens’t mean that the site is more profitable than Google. Yes, people spend more time and return more often to AOL.com, but it’s all about ad revenue (in which Google simply dominates). This is a good analogy to the average website owner’s business. It’s not about how many people come to your website. It’s about how much money you can generate from your website. This is why it’s so important to optimize your landing pages, improve your call to action, and basically make your website as efficient a marketing vehicle as you can.

Does this mean the Time Warner Internet subsidiary is–much to our surprise–somehow more valuable than Google? Not exactly. It’s Google’s ad dollars (about $10.6 billion annually and growing fast), not AOL’s ability to get people to hang around, that really counts.

So, that’s the scoop. Bear in mind that these ratings are really quite subjective. There is no single way to measure website popularity. In a ComScore ranking of website popularity based just on unique visitors, Yahoo was in the top spot followed by AOL. So while it does say that AOL is definitely not a sinking ship like some though, it isn’t necessarily at the top of the web business heap.

Popularity: 15% [?]