NYTimes.com is 5th Largest U.S. News Site

By: Eight of the top 20 news Web sites or groups in the U.S. during February were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen//NetRatings.

The top news sites in terms of audience for February were MSNBC.com, CNN General News, AOL News, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com. When aggregated, Gannett's newspaper sites (with the exception of USAToday.com) ranked 7th. Counted separately by Nielsen//NetRatings, USA Today's Web site ranked 11th.

Other aggregated newspaper groups included in the top 20 were Hearst Newspapers Digital, McClatchy Newspapers, and Cox Newspapers.

The rankings of current events and news sites were based on a panel of 60,000-plus Americans accessing the Web at work and home.

Three newspaper-affiliated sites also showed up in the top 20 directories/local guides category as ranked by Nielsen//NetRatings. In that list, the top three sites were Yahoo! Get Local, Superpages.com, and Time Warner Cable. The complete table is below.

Nielsen//NetRatings is a joint service of VNU-owned Nielsen and NetRatings, which is majority-owned by VNU, the parent company of E&P.

Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
MSNBC	19,640	0:24:33
CNN General News	17,283	0:29:36
AOL News	16,800	0:28:59
Yahoo! News	16,214	0:25:23
NYTimes.com	8,349	0:39:44
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	7,798	0:13:35
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	7,301	0:17:16
ABC News	6,347	0:09:03
washingtonpost.com	6,194	0:21:43
MSN Slate	5,596	0:08:14
USAToday.com	5,400	0:20:16
Hearst Newspapers Digital	4,819	0:15:50
CBS News	4,451	0:08:03
Fox News	4,343	0:30:23
WorldNow	3,960	0:09:27
Time Magazine	3,920	0:05:22
McClatchy Newspapers	3,729	0:15:32
LA Times	2,777	0:15:22
Netscape News	2,552	0:07:44
Cox Newspapers	2,492	0:12:58

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Yahoo! Get Local	13,312	0:09:47
Superpages.com	7,366	0:06:11
Time Warner Cable	5,980	0:17:05
Citysearch	4,732	0:07:45
switchboard.com	4,406	0:08:49
US Search.com	4,353	0:03:24
Yahoo! People	3,902	0:03:20
SMARTpages	2,759	0:04:43
Whitepages.com	2,723	0:05:23
MSN City Guides	2,650	0:01:59
Government Guide	2,547	0:04:47
MSN Yellow Pages	2,530	0:00:51
AOL Yellow Pages	2,372	0:05:23
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,170	0:09:14
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,558	0:14:02
Yellowpages.com	1,471	0:08:05
QwestDex.com	1,324	0:08:28
About Cities and Towns	765	0:02:09
nj.com (Advance Publications)	761	0:12:05
Quickorder.com	686	0:12:29
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. February 2003