The website categories that experienced the largest jumps in visits from July to August 2009 included humor, lifestyle and home, and education sites, according to comScore Media Matrix's latest analysis of US online activity.

"August is back-to-school season for students, and many turned to the Web to prepare for the upcoming school year," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. "Others made use of their last days of summer pursuing leisure activities online, including visiting humor sites and tending to their homes and gardens."

The B2B, career training and education, and finance news and research categories also experienced significant increases in visits from July to August.

Here are more findings from comScore, grouped by category: 

Education

• Back-to-school season propelled a 10% increase in visits to education sites from July to August, with the category attracting 97.5 million visitors:
• Pearson Education led all education sites with 12 million visitors (up 14%), followed by HotChalk with 7.7 million visitors (up 31%), and ClassesUSA with 7 million visitors (up 2%). Blackboard.com experienced strong gains, growing 67% to 2.4 million visitors.

Humor

• Americans turned to humor sites for entertainment as summer vacation came to an end. The category grew 21% in August to 33.7 million visitors, a high for the category in the past year.
• Break.com led the category with nearly 5.6 million visitors, followed by Comedy Central with 4.4 million, and National Lampoon Humor Network with 4.3 million (up 7%). Visits to Wimp.com jumped 58%. 

Home Improvement

• This category experienced an 18% increase in visits from July to August.
• About.com Home & Garden and Ehow Home and Garden led the category with 3.5 million visitors each, followed by AOL Home with 3.4 million (up 14%).
• iVillage Home and Garden surged 326% in August to 3.3 million visitors.

B2B

• Visits to sites in the business-to-business category increased 17% to 38 million visitors in August.
• MerchantCircle.com led the category rankings with 6.9 million visitors.
• Reed Business Information sites (including Hotfrog.com, and BuyerZone.com) grabbed the #2 position with 4.7 million visitors (up 6%).
• Yahoo! Small Business was another trusted source of information during the month with more than 3 million visitors, up 83%.

Top-Visited Websites

Google Sites once again led as the most visited property in August with 161 million visitors, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 158 million visitors and Microsoft Sites with 130 million visitors.

Other findings:

• Facebook.com held its #5 ranking with 92 million visitors, up 5% from the previous month.
• The Mozilla Organization ascended 6 positions to #24 with 32 million visitors.
• iVillage.com also jumped 6 spots to #41 with more than 21 million visitors.

Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking

AOL Advertising (renamed from Platform-A) led the August Ad Focus ranking, reaching 91% of all Americans online.

Other findings:

• Yahoo! Network ranked second, reaching 88% of the population.
• Google jumped one spot to #3 with an 84% reach.
• Adconion Media Group climbed 5 positions to the #20 spot with 129.6 million unique visitors, reaching nearly 66% of the US Internet audience.

About the data: The data cited here derives from comScore's Media Matrix service.