ComScore ranks top 50 Web properties for Oct.

Humor, politics, and gambling apparently seized Web users' attention in October

So if you can combine all three and throw in a Big Mac (that reference will be explained below), you should be able to harness the whole Internet community in one fell swoop.

ComScore released its ranking of the top 50 Web properties for October on Monday, revealing some interesting Internet trends for the month. 

Humor websites led the rankings with 60 million users visiting a humor-related site in the month of October, which is up 25% from September, making it the second fastest growing category (next to online gambling sites…go figure).  Comedy Central took the largest share of users with 10.8 million visitors, a 26% increase from September with the much anticipated “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in Washington DC, led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  Break.com came in second with 7.5 million visitors, up 65% from September.

The rankings also reveal that people really do care about politics.  American political news sites saw a jump in October with the impending Midterm elections, drawing 27.4 million unique monthly visitors, which is up 12% from September.  CNN Politics took the bulk of those users with 7.8 million uniques, up 3% from September, followed by PoliticsDaily with 5.1 million uniques (up 10% from September), and RealClearPolitics.com with 3.1 million uniques (up 79%).  BarackObama.com saw a massive increase in uniques, jumping 221% with 2.1 million uniques.

And while those people were reading up on propositions and candidates, they were also waging bets against their mortgages on online gambling sites.  With the World Series of Poker in full gear in October, online gambling sites saw a sweeping influx of users, up 114% from September with 32 million uniques, making it the highest growing category for the second month in a row.  FullTiltPoker took the lead with 4.7 million users, followed by PokerStars with 2.5 million users.

And, evidently, while those people were checking up on their local candidates for governor and  awayall their fine flatware, they were also scarfing down Big Macs.  No, not really (I mean, there may have been a few who did all of this at once, but it’s highly unlikely).  McDonalds was among the top ten highest gaining websites in October, leaping 91% to 6.5 million visitors in October, compared to September 3.4 million visitors.  Other top gaining websites included PartCity.com, which skyrocketed in October to 6.3 million users from 2.8 million in September.

Overall, the top 50 Web properties were led by Google sites, with over 180 million visitors, followed by Yahoo sites with 179.6 million visitors, and Microsoft sites with 170.6 million visitors.  Facebook took the number four spot with 151.1 million visitors, for the first time passing the 150 million monthly visitor mark.  AOL came in at number five with 110 million visitors, Amazon came in at number 11, eBay took the number 16 slot, and Demand Media came in at number 17.  Twitter took the 46 slot with 25.1 million visitors.

In terms of ad focus rankings, the Google Ad Network led the category with a reach of 93.4% of online Americans, followed by Yahoo Network Plus with an 86.3% reach, and AOL Advertising with a reach of 86.2%.

Image source: comScore.com