Google tops Nielsen stats

TWO OUTTA THREE AIN’T BAD: Google was the Internet’s #1 destination in 2011 with 153 million unique monthly visitors, while Google-owned YouTube was the top destination for videos with 111 million monthly visitors, according to Nielsen stats. But the 2011 digital trends report only covered data from the first nine months of the year, posing a timeliness issue that Nielsen has struggled with in other areas of its ratings business, the N.Y. Post noted. Nielsen shows Google+ as the #8 social media property, but that’s because the site was only opened to the general public in September and the data is only calculated through October. Recent data from comSore suggests Google+ has made gains, and is no longer behind MySpace, as Nielsen numbers showed. This week, an unofficial Google+ tally said the social network had surpassed 60 million members, was adding 625k people a day and would reach half of Facebook’s population with 400 million users by the end of 2012. Facebook, of course, tops Nielsen’s Top 10 social networks and blogs list, as well as the #2 Web brand and the #3 video destination, also according to Nielsen. Google’s Blogger was #2 in the social-blog rankings. (12/29a)