• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 23, 2013

Yahoo remained the No. 1 U.S. Web property in November, extending its lead over Google by about 2 million monthly visitors to 194.6 million, according to the latest comScore data.

Google had 192.7 million visitors, followed by Microsoft with 177.5 million, Facebook (141.4 million) and AOL (120.2 million). Keep in mind that those figures include only desktop activity.

Yahoo overtook Google as the top site in July for the first time since May 2011 and has not yielded the top slot since. The company’s CEO Marissa Mayer has made a point of highlighting audience growth during her tenure -- noting that in September, for example, the number of active monthly users worldwide topped 800 million.

But so far, those gains haven’t translated into revenue growth for Yahoo, which fell further behind Google and Facebook in display ad share this year, according to an eMarketer estimate. While both its main rivals have ramped up their mobile ad businesses, Yahoo’s still doesn’t contribute a significant amount to its overall sales.

Many of the largest sites, including Yahoo, Google and Facebook, saw traffic decline modestly in November from the prior month. But one that bucked the trend among the top 10 was Amazon, which saw unique visitors increase to 114.4 million from 109 million in October as holiday shopping started heating up.

Not surprisingly, various retail categories were among the fastest-gaining segments in November, according to the comScore report released Monday. E-cards led the way, followed by toys, consumer electronics, jewelry/luxury goods, and department stores. In the services category, coupons was also among the top-gaining categories.

Last week, comScore reported that e-commerce sales through the first 45 days of the November-December holiday shopping period had reached $37.8 billion. Total spending since Thanksgiving was $19.2 billion, up 21% from the same period a year earlier.