MySpace Dethrones Yahoo As Page-View LeaderMySpace Dethrones Yahoo As Page-View Leader

Social network MySpace drove parent Fox Interactive Media past typical leader Yahoo in number of page views in November, a Web metrics firm says.

Fox Interactive had 39.53 billion page views last month, while Yahoo had 38.05 billion, comScore Networks said Wednesday. As an indication of the impact of MySpace, Fox Interactive in November 2005, which is before parent News Corp. acquired MySpace, had 231 million page views from all its properties.

In terms of unique visitors, however, Yahoo remained the leader with 129.9 million. Fox Interactive was sixth with 73.8 million.

The number of page views indicates how long users stay on a site. While MySpace continues to grow as a favorite hangout on the Web, last month's numbers don't necessarily reflect a trend, experts say. November is unique in that many people are busy with online shopping in preparation for Christmas, so they're less likely to visit Yahoo's nonshopping properties.

In addition, Yahoo is increasingly building Web pages with Ajax, a programming technique that delivers only data to a page, eliminating the need to reload the whole page again.

Rounding out the top five Web properties in terms of page views were Microsoft sites, 17.9 billion; Time Warner Network, 16.7 billion; and Google, 11.9 billion. In terms of unique visitors, the top five, following Yahoo, were Time Warner, 119.7 million; Microsoft, 117 million; Google, 108.3 million; and eBay, 83 million.