comScore announced today that it has acquired Nedstat, an online analytics and optimization firm based out of Amsterdam.

The acquisition enables comScore to substantially expand its presence in Europe, with offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. The company says this will help it reach out to new clients in these markets.

comScore released its monthly Media Metrix top 50 revealing the top 50 U.S. web properties. Here are the top ten:

More than half of Malaysians online visited a news/information site in July, reaching more than 5.5 million visitors, according to a new report from comScore.

Yahoo News led as the most visited site in the category reaching 1.2 million visitors, followed by the New York Times Digital with 873,000 visitors.

Like most studies, surveys, and stat counts related to Internet user behavior, search market stats should generally be taken with a grain of salt. While they can give us a general idea of which search engines users flock to, there are too many variables to paint a completely accurate picture.

What’s your search engine of choice? Why? Let us know.

For a long time, Orkut has been the one bright spot in Google’s social media stable; it’s been the sole product that became really popular in some markets, even as everything else struggled to gain users (and/or not get the axe).  Only new stats indicate that Facebook’s beaten Orkut in India, which represented one of its two strongholds.

comScore released its Video Metrix data for July today. According to this, 178 million people in the U.S. watched online video content during the month, watching an average of 14.7 hours per user.

During the month, Facebook moved up from the fourth position to the third position behind Yahoo properties, and of course Google properties at number 1. Facebook accounted for 46.6 million viewers.

comScore has released some interesting research on Twitter usage in different countries. The firm found that in June, about 93 million people visited Twitter.com, up 109% from the previous year.

Of course this doesn’t even take into account all of the third-party Twitter apps, which many users access Twitter regularly from. A lot of users rarely go to Twitter.com.

Online retail spending in the U.S. reached $32.9 billion in the second quarter, up 9 percent over a year ago, according to a new report from comScore.

The growth rate represented the third consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth following a year of flat or negative growth rates.

"The second quarter’s continuation of the first quarter’s strong retail e-commerce growth rates is encouraging," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women then men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May compared to 69.7 percent of men, according to a new report from comScore.

It’s a rare person who would suggest that any online traffic report is completely accurate; most folks know stats from Hitwise, Nielsen, and the like are closer to educated guesses.  But it turns out that last month, comScore got Yahoo’s June stats wrong by a significant margin, leading Yahoo to announce the problem in a press release today.

More than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video content in June, according to the latest report from comScore.

Google sites, driven by video viewing on YouTube, ranked as the top video content property with 144.5 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo sites (44.9 million viewers) and Vevo (43.7 million viewers).

As everybody knows by now, the whole Google-China scuffle has not done the search giant’s market share any favors in that country.  But it’s been quite a while since we’ve checked in on Google’s performance in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and today, comScore was good enough to provide some relevant data.

Google fans will be pleased to know that the company’s still doing well, especially in terms of unique visitors.  comScore determined that Google reached about 55 percent of the region’s online population in May, which is impressive.

June did not go at all well for Yahoo, judging by new statistics from comScore.  In fact, at least in terms of time spent on the company’s properties, June was terrible, with Yahoo managing to set a couple of records of the wrong sort.

Palm’s out of the running.  Microsoft’s about to lose its advantage.  And although they’re still way out in front, even RIM and Apple appear to be in trouble, according to the latest report from comScore, which indicates that Android has taken market share from all of its top competitors.

comScore has revealed some findings on display ads in the U.S. Flash and rich media ads account for 40% of impressions, according to the firm’s report. JPEG ads led the market with over 42% of impressions in the U.S., while "leaderboard"-style banner ads (728 x 90) were the most commonly viewed display ad by size.

comScore has released some numbers about smartphone and feature phone browser and app usage, as it relates to map access and mobile navigation in the U.S. These numbers are based on a study, which found  14% of mobile users in the U.S. accessed maps on their devices in April, as the mobile map audience reached 33.5 million users, a 44% increase from last year.

More mobile users are also now accessing maps via apps as opposed to the browser, the study found.

During the month of May 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video, according to the latest figures from comScore.

YouTube saw record levels of viewing activity during the month with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing 100 videos per viewer for the first time.

U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, with Google sites leading the way with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube account for the majority of videos viewed at the property.

More than 123 million Americans visited newspaper websites in May, representing 57 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience, according to a new report from comScore.

The New York Times Brand led the category with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pageviews during the month. The average visitor viewed 22 pages of content on the New York Times.  Tribune Newspapers ranked second in terms of audience with 24.8 million visitors, followed by Advance Internet (18.1 million visitors) and USA Today (16.8 million visitors).

There were 234 million Americans who were mobile subscribers for the 3-month period ending in April, according to a new report from comScore.

 During that time, Samsung ranked as the top manufacturer with 22.1 percent share of U.S. mobile subscribers, up one point from the previous three-month period. LG ranked second with 21.9 percent share, trailed closely by Motorola (21.6 percent share, down 1.4 percent), RIM (8.4 percent share) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).

Social networking now ranks as the fastest-growing mobile content category, according to a new report from comScore.

"With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content — whether it is via application, browser or both — continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

Last month, the yet-to-launch Google TV did quite well for itself, grabbing a whole lot of headlines and getting all sorts of people excited.  And although this observation may not seem as timely, it turns out that Google’s existing video properties did well for themselves in April, winning an additional 1.4 percent of market share according to new comScore data.