Retailers saw record traffic of 194m Americans in December, 83m visitors put Apple in top 10 sites

We’ve already seen that traffic to retail sites exploded during Thanksgiving 2012, and now data is coming in to show that holiday numbers were also phenomenal. In fact, the retail category witnessed a record-breaking traffic volume of 194 million Americans last month, or 9 out of 10 of all US Web users in December.

The latest figures come from comScore, which every month ranks the top 50 Web properties in the US. Here’s how the December 2012 list looks like:

As you can see, not much changed at the top of the list: Google was still first with 191 million visitors, Yahoo was second with 185 million, Microsoft was third with 169 million, and Facebook was fourth with 150 million. Those four giants barely move around.

Yet a bit lower down the list, and Apple managed to vault into the top 10 with 83.6 million visitors. comScore attributes the big jump to holiday shoppers.

Netflix and Pinterest also saw big gains: both jumped eight positions in the ranking to number 40 and number 42, respectively. Apple will likely fall back down after December, but it’s not clear how big of a negative impact January will have for Netflix and Pinterest.

Unsurprisingly, the gains in retail sites also resulted in gains for shipping sites. comScore’s shipping category soared to its highest traffic level on record in December with nearly 40 million visitors. UPS sites secured the number one position with 21.2 million visitors (up 26 percent), followed by USPS with 16.1 million (up 26 percent), and FedEx with 15.7 million (up 29 percent).

“With every year that passes, we consistently see online buying becoming a more pivotal part of consumers’ holiday shopping strategy,” Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of comScore, said in a statement. “The 2012 season was no different, generating $42.3 billion in spending throughout November and December, which is up 14 percent from last year. Critical to the success of e-commerce are shipping companies, who saw their highest online traffic peak this holiday season with nearly 40 million visitors.”

Image credit: Manu Mohan