• June 12, 2008

Wikianswers.com had the biggest traffic gain in the last year among the Internet's top 100 sites--growing 520% to 10.3 million monthly visitors, according to new research from media-buying agency ZenithOptimedia. The finding underscores the growing popularity of question-and-answer sites that also include Yahoo Answers, Answersbag and Amazon's Askville.

A separate study by Hitwise in March found that the share of overall Web traffic to Q&A sites had doubled over the last year.

By contrast, employment site Monster.com had the biggest drop-off for the year ending April 2008 as its audience dwindled by 26% to 9.3 million.

In terms of time spent, Microsoft's Live.com was the big gainer, increasing 656% to 18.1 minutes a day. AOL's AIM.com showed the biggest decline, falling 67.8% to 5.3 minutes a day.

Google remained the Web's top search provider with 56.5% of total queries.

--Mark Walsh