Newspaper websites posted their largest traffic gains last year, hitting 62.8 million average monthly uniques in Q4—up 6 percent over the same period last year, according to a report by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. This is the highest number since the NAA began tracking online use in January 2004. Among the report’s other findings:

SEE ALSO: Amid General Declines, Online Ad Spend On Newspaper Websites Climb 21.1 Percent, NAA Reports

—About 39 percent of all internet users visited newspapers’ sites during Q4.
—Time spent on these sites averaged 44 minutes a month.
—Users generated more than three billion page impressions on average, a 7.3 percent increase over Q406.

It could be due to the law of large numbers - not to mention that reading a newspaper site increasingly is becoming the norm—but growth rates appear to be slowing given that Q406 was up 9 percent over the same period in 2005. Release