• by June 21, 2004

It's the first day of summer and we can't say that work is on our minds.

Right? Right.

No matter, comScore Media Metrix wants to fill our minds with assorted online factoids today and we're grateful.

Here are a few nuggets of online behavior in May 2004:

*Rental car companies Enterprise, Budget, Dollar and Hertz each saw double-digit increases in visitors between April and May for a 10 percent increase in visitors. The increase placed the rental car category at No. 5 in the Top 10 gaining categories.

*Hotels.com and Orbitz.com placed in the Top 10 gaining categories with increases in traffic of 34 and 25 percent, respectively.

*The Weather category saw traffic increase 10 percent with WeatherBug experiencing the biggest gain (36 percent), aided, in part, by a partnership with AOL Instant Messenger. (Interestingly, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Weather.com, the online property of The Weather Channel, made it into its Top 10 ranking for May).

*An online promotion between Sierra Mist and Shrek 2 increased traffic to PepsiCo's site by 36 percent. SierraMist.com hosted the movie trailer and a sweepstakes.

*Traffic to Upromise.com rose 49 percent from April to May to make it No. 2 in the top gaining properties list. A joint promotion with America Online, which advertised the offer on TV and in out-of-home media, factored into the traffic spike.

As expected, the death of former President Ronald Reagan sent online traffic soaring, with 25 million or 54 percent of office workers visiting current events or news websites during the week ending June 13, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Interestingly, Nielsen found that The New York Post ranked as the fastest growing current events and global news destination, with traffic to the paper's site increasing 123 percent to more than 1.1 million unique visitors from work. The top story focused on news coverage of Reagan's funeral and drew more than 58 percent of site traffic. Traffic to Internet Broadcasting Service/Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive jumped 97 percent to 923,000 unique visitors, compared to 468,000 visitors during the previous week. BBC News drew 1.5 million visitors, an 80 percent week-over-week increase, Nielsen said.

And rounding out the top five fastest growing current events and global news destinations were New York Daily News Online Edition and MSN Slate, which grew 77 and 74 percent, respectively; top stories for both sites were Reagan-related, according to Nielsen.