Take this recession, please: Humor sites gain viewers

Americans need a laugh right now.

Humor sites on the Web scored the biggest gains of all categories of subject matter tracked by ComScore Media Metrix in August.

The category was up 21% in visitors compared with a year earlier, according to the ratings firm. Overall, the laughter sites attracted nearly 33.7 million visitors during the month.

The leading humor site in the survey was Break.com, which features video clips, often of accidental, painful falls -- for laughs. Second most popular was Comedy Central. And third was Wimp.com, a collection of mostly PG-rated clips that avoids face plants.

The education category scored the most visitors -- nearly 97.5 million. That was a 10% hike over last year, and the leading site was Pearson Education, which produces print and digital materials in a variety of fields.

The top sites tracked in the survey were from Google. Together, they attracted more than 161 million visitors. They were followed by the Yahoo sites at 158 million and Microsoft sites at 130 million.

Among social networks, Facebook took top honors with 92.2 million visitors. EBay was the winner in e-commerce with 71.8 million visitors, followed by Amazon.com with 68.1 million.

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