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.

“News sites combine both significant reach and user engagement, making them an ideal destination for many brand advertisers,” said Joe Nguyen,

comScore

vice president for Southeast Asia.

“Similar to offline news-reading habits, online readers displayed strong brand loyalty to their preferred news sources. Of the top five local news destinations, only 1 out of 4 Malaysians visited more than one of these sites during the month.”

The rest of the list was mainly local news and information attracting strong user engagement. TheStar.com.my was the top local brand in the ranking reaching 788,000 visitors, with an average visitor spending 16 minutes on the site during July and viewing 18 pages of content on average. Malaysiakini.com reached 547,000 visitors, with users consuming 33 pages on average and spending 16 minutes on the site during the month, while the New Straits Times’ Hmetro.com.my saw 545,000 unique visitors, with visitors averaging 20 pages and spending more than 20 minutes on the site.