Gap Widens Between Big 3 Search Engines & Facebook In December, comScore Says

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo sites continue to hold down the top three spots in comScore’s monthly report on the most visited web properties in the U.S., but the gap between them and Facebook grew bigger in December.

According to the latest comScore Media Metrix rankings, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites all saw an increase in unique visitors in December, while Facebook declined. That leaves Facebook about 14 million unique visitors behind Yahoo, compared to about eight million behind the prior month.

Here’s the full comScore top 50 chart for December 2011.

The top ten sites listed are unchanged from the previous month, although the order changed slightly near the bottom of the top ten.

As you’d expect during December, retail and shipping websites saw big gains in traffic during the month. Movie sites were the biggest gainer in the Retail category, with Netflix, Redbox, Blockbuster and Walmart Movies all seeing traffic gains. Netflix, in fact, was one of the month’s biggest gainers; comScore says its 34.7 million uniques in December was a 31 percent jump from November. UPS.com was the top shipping site, also up 31 percent from November to December.