• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 19, 2011

In need of some good news, AOL's network of sites saw visitors stay about 5% longer in April, according to new data from Nielsen.

From home and work computers, Google remained the most-visited site in the U.S. in April, with 150 million unique visitors. While 194.8 million Americans went online in April, overall Internet use was down 2.4% from March.

Still, YouTube increased U.S. visitors month-over-month, with average visitors spending 2.9% more time on the video hub in April. The site hit an all-time high that month, as their U.S. viewers consumed 8.7 billion streams: up 7% month-over-month.

Partly due to the fewer days in April, U.S. consumers spent slightly less time online -- 3.8% less time, on average -- and visited fewer unique sites compared to March.

Yet despite the slight monthly decline in time spent, Nielsen estimates that Internet access at home and work grew to 244 million individuals in the U.S. in April.

Wikipedia managed to leapfrog over Apple to become the eighth-most-visited site in April -- even with questions about the dedication of its contributors.

In addition, Americans streamed 14.7 billion videos in April -- the most streams ever in a month, according to Nielsen. While the number of videos streamed increased, however, total viewing time actually decreased during the period. There were 141.4 million unique U.S. video viewers who spent an average of 4 hours, 31 minutes viewing video over the course of the month, per Nielsen.

AOL Media Network and The CollegeHumor Network saw the largest month-over-month increase in unique viewers -- up 13% and 11%, respectively -- placing them just ahead of Hulu, which was the sixth top video brand in March.

New to the list of most heavily used sites with double-digit gains in streams from March were Dailymotion -- up 61% -- AOL Media Network - up 31% -- and Megavideo -- up 25%.