The report found that portals commanded the largest share of online minutes, followed by entertainment, research/navigation, social networking and retail site.

Based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service, these five categories combined accounted for half of all time spent online in Greater China during April.

“The digital environment is constantly growing and evolving and no place is greater proof of this than Greater China,” said Xinyu Huang, comScore senior vice president of Greater China, who is newly appointed to this position.

“To support these burgeoning digital economies, agencies, advertisers and publishers need reliable audience metrics in order to move ad dollars online, helping the industry to flourish. comScore aims to support this growth by continuing to bring its trusted digital measurement solutions to these markets.”

Online users spend most time on portals and entertainment sites

Internet users, aged 15 and older, accessing the Internet from a home or work location in Greater China allocated the largest share of their time online to portal sites in April.

During the month surveyed portals accounted for 24.4% of time spent online. Entertainment sites followed at 9%, search/navigation secured 6.2%, while social networking accounted for just 5.5% of total minutes, less than one-third of the category’s percentage on a worldwide basis. The retail category ranked fifth with 5%.

Analysis of the most-visited sites across these categories showed Tencent, leading as the top portal in Greater China reaching 64.4% of all Internet users in the market.

Online video provider, Youku, led as the largest entertainment site reaching 19.2% percent of online users, while Baidu.com Inc. ranked as the largest search/navigation property reaching 59.4% web users.

Oak Pacific interactive sites that includes renren.com, led as the most-visited social networking destination in Greater China, reaching 17.8% of unique visitors, while Alibaba.com held the number one spot among retail destinations, accounting for 36.5% of visitors.

Both charts:

*Greater China refers to the aggregate of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
**Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.