Figures released by the internet marketing research firm comScore for the month of March have shown Google is still the most popular UK site, while BSkyB is the fastest growing.Helped by a strong marketing campaign, the number of UK visitors to the BSkyB sites grew by 36 per cent to 9.7 million, making BSkyB the biggest gainer among the top-20 sites.
The campaign was designed to rival the interest that Virgin group sites attract. According to comScore, Virgin sites draw just over 11 million users, a growth of four per cent from February.
Google's sites continued to retain the top spot, with 27.3 million visitors. Second and third place went to Microsoft sites and eBay, with 26.8 and 22 million visitors respectively.
The survey also showed the increasing popularity of social networking sites, which made important gains in March and continues to be a marked trend in the internet world.
Tagged.com made a 226 per cent surge to more than three million visitors, Six Apart gained 30 per cent more visitors to 3.5 million and Facebook rose by 38 per cent to 2.7 million visitors.
The UK Top Gaining Properties list was mainly made up of consumer sites, the biggest draws being supermarkets such as Tesco, seven million visitors for a ten per cent gain, and Wal-Mart (Asda) with a 15 per cent gain for a total of 2.6 million visitors.
The biggest jump was by mobile phone company Vodafone, which boosted 47 per cent to four million visitors.
ComScore uses a "panel" of two million users which agree to have their internet habits and visits tracked, in order to create a sample size for its data.
