The NY Times’ website drew just over 20 million unique visitors in November — a 10% increase over unique traffic to the site last November.

Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 41.9% year over year growth, reaching 41.8 million unique visitors last month, according to Nielsen. 

MSNBC edged past CNN Digital Network (CNN), which drew 41.5 million unique visitors during the month — a 27% increase over its November 2007 unique audience.

Despite the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election, The Huffington Post (ranked #21) continued to see the fastest growth among the top 30 sites. The site’s unique audience increased 270% over November 2007 — to 7 million unique visitors.  However, Huffington’s unique audience declined from October 2008, when the site’s unique visitors grew by 448% year over year to 8.1 million.

Fox News Digital Network was the second fastest growing site among the top 30 — up 131% over November 2007.

Among the top 30 newspaper sites, the Minneapolis Star Tribune (ranked #12) saw the fastest growth.  The site’s unique audience increased 265% over November 2007 — to 3.5 million unique visitors. 

The Detroit News (ranked #25) was the second fastest growing site among the to 30 — up 232% over November 2007.

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

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

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

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings on MSNBC.com.

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.

MSNBC Digital Network

Surging interest in the Beijing Olympics and the U.S. political conventions, which occupied back-to-back weeks in August, may have played a part in boosting MSNBC past its close competitor, Yahoo! News, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday. 

In August, MSNBC drew 52.2 million unique visitors — 12 million more than Yahoo!’s news portal, according to Nielsen.  During the prior August, both Yahoo! News and CNN Digital Network edged past MSNBC.com, with 34.3 million and 31.7 million unique visitors, respectively, to MSNBC’s 29.6 million visitors.

Most of the news websites in Nielsen’s top 30 ranking attracted larger online audiences in August 2008 than they had the prior August, and all but two of the top 10 sites showed double-digit percentages of growth.

Beyond the top 10, TheHuffingtonPost.com, ranked #23 by Nielsen, and the Daily News Online Edition (#30) showed especially large year-over-year audience growth.

TheHuffingtonPost.com saw its unique audience jump by 291% — from 1.3 million in August 2007 to 5.1 million last month.  Meanwhile, the Daily News Online Edition grew by 103% — from 2.2 million unique visitors in August 2007 to 4.5 million in August 2008.