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Google, Microsoft Top Sites in Germany, U.K., France

Google and Microsoft sites were the top online destinations in Western Europe in April, according to the comScore World Metrix reports for Germany (the first such report for the country), the U.K. and France, reports MarketingCharts.

Some 32.6 million Germans went online during April, the largest online presence of any European country, comScore said.

Among the World Metrix findings for Germany:

• Google sites constituted the most-visited property in Germany, attracting 23 million visitors, followed by Microsoft sites with 17.7 million visitors and eBay with 17.4 million visitors.
• Web-hosting property United-Internet, telecommunications property T-online, and multichannel retail specialists Otto Gruppe and Karstadt-Quelle were also among the Top 10 most-visited sites in April.

Among the World Metrix findings for the United Kingdom:

• Google maintained its place as the most-visited property in the U.K. with 27.4 million visitors, followed by Microsoft sites and eBay, with 27 and 21.6 million visitors, respectively. Google and MSN were visited by nearly nine out of every 10 Britons.
• The addition of About.com and IMDB.com to Lycos Europe’s portfolio of sites propelled the property to the 11th place.
• Facebook continued its rapid growth, and was the top gainer in the U.K. during April - up 38 percent for the second consecutive month to 3.7 million U.K. visitors (an aggregate growth of 90 percent for the two months).
• Bebo was also a top gainer, up 6 percent versus March, demonstrating that social networking’s popularity continues to increase in in the U.K.

Among the World Metrix findings for France:

• Google remained the most-visited site in France and grew at a faster rate than the French online population in April.
• The official sites of the two leading French presidential candidates showed substantial activity, with Sarkozy.fr seeing a particular surge at the end of the first round of voting (peaking on 23 April, with 68,000 unique visitors).
• News sites Le Monde, Nouvelobs.com and Groupe Amaury (owner of Le Parisien and L’Equipe) showed strong gains (30, 14 and 8 percent, respectively), boosted by strong public interest in the presidential elections.

More data and tables are available at MarketingCharts.