Google still leads Europe as the most visited site, but travel sites including Priceline, Experdia and Trip Advisor saw some of the highest gains this month, according to new research.
The study, from comScore, indicates that Google Sites ranked as the top European web property in June with 335.4 million unique visitors (up 6 percent from a year ago), reaching 91.0 percent of the total European Internet audience.
Microsoft Sites continued to rank second with 259.8 million visitors (70.5 percent reach), followed by Facebook.com in third place with 246.4 million visitors (66.8 percent reach).
Among the top 50 properties for June, the biggest gains versus May came from
Priceline.com Inc., which includes other travel sites Agoda and Booking.com, showing an overall 15 percent increase.
Expedia Inc. also showed a 7-percent increase in visitors compared to May 2011, largely driven by an increase in traffic to TripAdvisor Sites.
Europeans continued to spend most of their time on average on social networking sites.
Although European engagement with Russian social network VKontakte declined by 6 percent from the previous month, the property continued to display the highest average engagement among the top 30 properties, with Europeans spending 465.4 minutes (7.8 hours) on the site.
Facebook.com maintained its lead over Russian web property Mail.ru in June with an average of 328.8 minutes (5.5 hours) spent by visitors on the property.
Facebook.com also continued to account for the highest number of page views at 151.5 billion in June (up 8 percent), representing 15.3 percent of all pages viewed in Europe during the month.
