Gambling, Business/Finance, Education, Career, Hosting Sites Surge in September
The latest figures from comScore show that gambling sites picked up some serious steam in September, while Google Sites overtook Yahoo Sites as the top online property in the U.S. during the month.
Online Gambling sites reached an audience of 15 million unique visitors in September, up 20 percent from the 12.5 million visitors the category drew in August. This was driven mostly by online poker tournaments hosted by the likes of FullTiltPoker and PokerStars. FullTiltPoker was the top site in this category with 4.2 million visitors (up 46 percent). PokerStars followed with 2.7 million visitors (up 7 percent). Kinglotto had 1.4 million visitors, Absolute Poker had 1.3 million visitors, BetUs.com had 1.3 million visitors (up 274 percent) and Winner.com had more than a million visitors in September, up from just 31,000 in August.
Business/Finance sites had an audience of 167.8 million unique visitors in September, up 8 percent. This category was followed by Education Information sites, which drew 78.7 million visitors during the month, up 6 percent from August. Pearson Education led the way in this category with 17.8 million unique visitors (up 25 percent), followed by HotChalk with 13 million visitors (up 42 percent). About.com Education trailed with 8.2 million visitors (up 44 percent), and ClassesUSA welcomed 7.9 million visitors in September.
Career Services and Development – Training and Education sites (up 6 percent), Web Hosting sites (up 6 percent), Religion/Spirituality (up 6 percent), Health (up 5 percent), Retail – Flowers/Gifts/Greetings (up 5 percent), Retail – Computer Software (up 4 percent) and Food (up 3 percent) also saw strong gains in September.
AccuWeather Sites was the top-gaining property by percentage change in unique visitors in September, as its audience grew 57 percent month-over-month. It was followed by HotChalk, ABC Television, Babelgum, FunnyorDie, Liberty Media Holding Corporation, Pearson Education, ConstantContact.com, Research in Motion Limited and NBC Universal also saw big gains.
Google Sites finished September as the top Web property with 180 million unique visitors. Yahoo Sites followed with 178 million visitors, while Microsoft Sites had 165.1 million visitors, Facebook had 148.4 million visitors and AOL had 104.6 million visitors.
YellowBook Network crawled up eight spots to finish at No. 31 with 30.6 million visitors, while NBC Universal climbed 15 spots to finish at No. 33 with 29.1 million visitors.
BrightRoll Video Network led the AdFocus rankings with a potential reach of 99.5 percent, followed by TubeMogul Video Ad Platform with 97.5 percent and SpotXchange Video Ad Network with 96.9 percent.
There were 212.9 million unique visitors in the U.S. in September, according to comScore.
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