With 13.2 million unique U.S. visitors in January 2011, the Huffington Post was the ninth most popular non-financial news website visited from home and work computers in the U.S. Its new ‘sister’ site, AOL News, was the fourth most-popular with 22.1 million U.S.-based unique visitors. AOL News is AOL’s second most popular channel – behind MapQuest – and, in effect, the Huffington Post becomes AOL’s sixth most popular property just behind AOL Messenger/AIM (with 13.3 million uniques in January) and ahead of AOL Music (with 13.1 million).

AOL’s network of websites attracted 76.2 million unique U.S. visitors in January 2011, or 39 percent of all active U.S. web users. Visitors to AOL’s websites spent an average of 1 hour 58 minutes during the month, viewing 85 pages on average. Based on average visitor January figures, each Huffington Post reader adds almost 12 minutes of time and 18 pages to the AOL portfolio – a total of 155 million minutes and 237 million page views.

Although the Huffington Post had 13.2 million U.S. uniques in January, almost 10.2 million of them also visited an AOL website, thus the net effect of AOL’s acquisition is almost 3.1 million new visitors or 1.5 percent more reach into the active U.S. Internet population. There is also a strong overlap between the Huffington Post and AOL News. In January 2011, 44 percent of visitors to the Huffington Post also visited AOL News; with 27 percent of AOL News readers also visiting the Huffington Post.

It’s not just about the extra readers the acquisition brings but the type of visitor. Although the audience makeup to AOL News and the Huffington Post is broadly similar, the latter is more concentrated around certain demographic groups. For example, the Huffington Post has a higher concentration (34%) of 18-49 year old females compared to 29 pecent for AOL News. The Internet average is 27 percent.

Although the audiences to the two entities are spread similarly geographically across the U.S., it is notable that the Huffington Post is more likely to have visitors from the West Coast while AOL News tends to have a greater concentration of visitors from New England.

The Huffington Post audience also tends to be more highly-educated – 44 percent hold a bachelor or post-graduate degree, compared to 37 percent for AOL News, 31 percent across the entire AOL portfolio and 25 percent across the entire web.

A very encouraging element of Huffington Post reader behavior for AOL concerns who consumes content. Visitors from households with incomes above $150,000 account for twice the percentage of total page views consumed on Huffington Post (12%) than they account for on AOL News (7%) and across the entire Internet (6%).

Those with a bachelor’s degree account for 50 percent more of Huffington Post content (33%) compared to AOL News (24%) and the Internet average (22%). Most starkly, those with a post-grad degree account for almost three times the percentage of Huffington Post content (34%) than they average across the whole Internet and AOL News (both 12%).

Amongst January 2011’s U.S. top 10, Wikipedia (+6.7%) and MSN (+4.2%) saw the greatest monthly increase in Unique Visitors through PCs/laptops from home and work locations.

While Facebook, by some way, had the highest average time per person, Ask Search Network saw the greatest gain in monthly time spent, with the average visitor spending just under 11 minutes, up 16.4% from December 2010. Wikipedia, Facebook and Google shared similar growth in time spent, up 6.8%, 6.6% and 6%, respectively.

Top 10 U.S. Web Brands for January 2011 (Home and Work Locations)
Rank	Brand	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)	MOM % Change in UA	MOM % Change in Time PP
1	Google	153,623	1:21:00	-0.1%	6.0%
2	Facebook	135,622	7:24:12	0.0%	6.6%
3	Yahoo!	130,854	2:20:10	-1.1%	2.1%
4	MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	121,019	1:26:39	4.2%	-0.8%
5	YouTube	103,868	1:21:54	-1.9%	-0.1%
6	Microsoft	90,221	0:41:53	-0.2%	-3.4%
7	AOL Media Network	76,173	1:58:31	0.0%	-0.2%
8	Wikipedia	65,698	0:15:31	6.7%	6.8%
9	Ask Search Network	65,454	0:10:40	0.3%	16.4%
10	Apple	63,296	1:18:48	-6.2%	-6.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company
Read as: During January 2011, 153.6 million unique U.S. people visited Google using PC/laptops from home and work locations

When looking at the ten most popular Current Events and Global News sites, each saw month-over-month growth in their audience, as is often the case between December and January. Yahoo! News was the top site in the category with 46.3 million unique U.S. visitors, up 6% from December 2010. Yahoo! was followed by CNN Digital Network (+15%) and MSNBC Digital Network (+15.7%), both with double-digit gains in visitors.

Acquired by AOL earlier in the week, The Huffington Post was the #9 news site in January drawing 13.3 million unique visitors who averaged nearly 12 minutes on the site. Huff Post’s new sister site – AOL News – ranked #4 with 22.1 million unique visitors from home/work computers.

Although the Huff Post is now part of the same stable as AOL News, there was already some overlap amongst their audiences. In January 2011, 27% of US visitors to AOL News also visited Huff Post, while 44% of visitors to Huff Post also visited AOL News in that same month.

Top 10 U.S. Current Events & Global News Sites for January 2011 (Home & Work)
Rank	Brand	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)	MOM % Change in UA	MOM % Change in Time PP
1	Yahoo! News	46,274	0:14:54	6.0%	22.5%
2	CNN Digital Network	37,008	0:22:37	15.0%	22.7%
3	MSNBC Digital Network	32,494	0:16:36	15.7%	13.4%
4	AOL News	22,060	0:14:00	3.9%	0.2%
5	Tribune Newspapers	16,929	0:10:10	21.7%	3.9%
6	Fox News Digital Network	16,652	0:19:14	16.0%	-1.8%
7	NYTimes.com	15,503	0:15:15	24.0%	8.9%
8	ABCNEWS Digital Network	14,551	0:05:55	11.2%	0.6%
9	TheHuffingtonPost.com	13,266	0:11:39	12.0%	-18.4%
10	Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division	12,763	0:18:04	20.4%	22.5%
Source: The Nielsen Company
Read as: During January 2011, 46.3 million unique U.S. people visited Yahoo! News using PC/laptops from home and work locations
Note: The “Current Events & Global News” category does not include financial news sites such as Wall Street Journal, Reuters, etc. These sites are in a separate “Finanical News & Info” category

When looking at overall computer and Internet usage, U.S. Internet users spent more time online (+10%), visited more domains (+5.3%), engaged in more sessions (+3.5%) and viewed more pages (+3.5%) during January than they did last month.

Average U.S. Internet Usage for January 2011 (Home & Work)
Metrics	Current Month	Previous Month	% Change
Sessions/Visits per Person	59	57	3.5%
Domains Visited per Person	99	94	5.3%
Web Page Views per Person	2,750	2,656	3.5%
PC Time per Person	61:27:19	55:53:03	10.0%
Duration of a Web Page viewed	0:00:58	0:00:55	3.9%
Active Digital Media Universe	197,842,270	198,595,819	-0.4%
Current Digital Media Universe Estimate	242,999,000	240,813,000	0.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company

The NY Times’ website drew just over 20 million unique visitors in September — a 37% increase over unique traffic to the site last September.

Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 44% year over year growth, reaching 43.2 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen.

Surging interest in the U.S. presidential campaign likely drove growth for several U.S. news sites in September. 

The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska cracked Nielsen’s top 30 newspaper websites ranking for the first time, following a 928% jump in unique visitors over last September.  Sudden demand for news on Republican Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in September may have driven that dramatic increase. 

Two politics-centric sites, Politico.com (+219%) and TheHuffingtonPost.com (+457%), also saw notably large year over year percentage growth in September.

Meanwhile, Boston.com’s 122% above average growth can perhaps be attributed to Autumn baseball fever in the Hub.

Overall, all but three of the top 30 online news outlets, and all but one of the top 30 newspaper websites, attracted larger online audiences in September 2008 than they did the prior September.

View the top 30 newspaper websites for September in Editor & Publisher.

View the top 30 online news outlets for September in Editor & Publisher.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail.