Update: Online Gambling Traffic Rises in October

ComscoreMedia presents October numbers The independent internet measurement and monitoring organisation ComscoreMedia has conducted a research whose results prove that online gambling sites had another successful month, with increased traffic resulting from online poker tournaments, sports betting and interest due to legislative debates on the subject. The company Executive Vice President Jeff Hackett on this occasion stated that "Web activity was largely impacted by the midterm election in October which drove increased traffic to political news sites, while online gambling sites saw gains due to interest in the 2010 World Series of Poker." Having in mind that mid-term elections are coming at the beginning of November, Americans visited political news sites in October to stay up-to-date on campaign developments and voter news and information. In October only, this category noted a 12-percent growth compared to September, with 27.4 million visitors. The leader in the category turned out to be CNN Politics with 7.8 million unique visitors during the month (3 percent increase). The next was PoliticsDaily with 5.1 million visitors (up 10 percent) and RealClearPolitics.com with 3.1 million (up 79 percent). The standing of BarackObama.com was improved by four positions, and it is now #4 with 2.1 million visitors, noting an increase of 221 percent. After it came The Economist group with 2.0 million visitors, and Politico.com, which grew 11 percent to 1.7 million visitors. In October, as the WSOP was getting close to its finale, online gambling internet activity again surged strongly, with this particular category noting almost 32 million visitors in October only, which is a 114 percent growth in comparison with September. With such results, this became the highest growing site category for the second month in a row. In the category, FullTiltPoker reached the place on the top, with 4.7 million visitors (up 12 percent), it is followed by PokerStars with 2.5 million visitors, then come UB.com with 1.8 million visitors and its month-long 'Perfect Play' promotion, Kingolotto with 1.7 million visitors (up 23 percent), as well as Absolute Poker with 1.6 million (up 19 percent) and Sportingbet PLC with 1.4 million (up 39 percent). On the Internet in general, the sites with most traffic were again Google with 180.8 million visitors, then Yahoo! Sites with 179.6 million and Microsoft Sites with 170.6 million; there fourth place was occupied by Facebook.com which for the first time exceeded the threshold of 150 million visits, with its 151.1 million visitors. Google Ad Network also led the October Ad Focus ranking with a reach of 93.4 percent of Americans online, followed by Yahoo! Network Plus with an 86.3-percent reach and AOL Advertising with 86.2 percent.