Google leads April Internet visits, but news sites see big growth
The search giant did well in ComScore's April tally, but the big story appeared to be growth in visitors to general news sites.
Google dominated April Internet traffic rankings for overall site visitors and advertising, but general news sites such as Yahoo-ABC News and Huffington Post also saw big increases in traffic that pushed the entire category to an all-time high in the month, according to the latest data from ComScore. See all the rankings in the PDF below.
ComScore's monthly analysis of U.S. Web activity found a 12 percent increase in traffic to general news sites. In April, these sites saw a total of 183 million visitors.
"The general news category reached an all-time high in April, reaching nearly 5 out of every 6 U.S. Internet users during the month," Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of ComScore, said in a news release.
Yahoo-ABC News, which partnered last year to beef up news coverage, ranked No. 1 in news at 89.1 million visitors. Huffington Post was second with 59.4 million visitors, followed by CNN with 57.4 million, MSNBC with 55.7 million, CBS News with 39.3 million and USAToday with 34.1 million. (Disclosure: CBS is the corporate parent of CNET.)
Beauty, fashion, and style sites also saw some increased traffic in April, growing 9 percent to 83.6 million visitors. Glam Style ranked first in the category with 13.2 million visitors, followed by Stylelist at 9.9 million visitors, Hearst Beauty & Fashion at 5.2 million, PopSugar Fashion Beauty & Shopping with 4.7 million and Total Beauty Media with 4.7 million.
Of course, none of those numbers beat Google's 189 million visitors. The company took the top slot overall and in the top 50 ad-focused rankings thanks to its ad display network.
Microsoft came in at No. 2 overall with 171.2 million, followed by Yahoo with 170.9 million and Facebook.com with 158.7 million. Glam Media climbed 3 spots to No. 9 in the ranking, while Tumblr.com earned a spot on the chart for the first time at No. 47 with 23.5 million visitors.
Google's ad network, which distributes ads onto other sites, reached 92.2 percent of Americans online, followed by Rubicon Project REVV Platform at 88 percent, AOL Advertising at 83.7 percent. Google's onsite ads came in fourth with 82.5 percent, followed by AT&T AdWorks, which reached 81.1 percent.