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Top UK Sites: Google Still Leads, Mozilla Growing Fastest

The total UK online population was higher than ever in June - some 31.7 million unique visitors, or 63% of the total UK population age 15 and older - according to a comScore World Metrix report on the UK’s top internet properties and top gaining properties for June.

Highlights from the comScore data:

• The average internet user in the UK spent almost 35 hours online during the month.
• Google remained the most visited property in the UK with 27.7 million unique visitors in June, reaching 88% of the total UK online population, down slightly from May.

• Microsoft and eBay remained the second and third most-visited properties in the UK, with 26.8 million and 22.1 million unique visitors respectively.
• Almost all of the top 20 most-visited properties underwent only modest changes in visitation levels from the previous month, although there were significant gains for Adobe and bebo.com.
• The fastest-growing property in the top 20 was Adobe Sites; its traffic swelled 11% as a result of the release of an Acrobat Reader update.
• Social networking site bebo.com was the second biggest growing property in the top 20, its traffic increasing 7%.
• The fastest-growing property in June was The Mozilla Organization - driven by the continued uptake of and updates to the Firefox Web browser - with 41% more unique visitors than in May.

• Sustained interest in the television show Big Brother buoyed Channel 4’s online audience; it was the second highest gainer, increasing 39% to 6.1 million unique visitors.
• Rounding out the top three gainers was social-networking site Facebook.com - growing a further 25% in June.

Facebook.com is the 28th most popular property in the UK; if its growth continues as it has over the last 6 months, it may enter the top 20 most-visited properties in July, comScore said.

Other notable gainers during June included The Weather Channel (up 12%) and travel sites TUI Group, First Choice Holidays PLC, British Airways and Lastminute.com (up 9%, 8%, 7% and 7% respectively), according to the data.