It’s the first business week of 2012 for many, so what better to start the year than a comparison with this time 12 months ago.

There were more visits to websites in the final week of 2011 compared to 2010 – 1.51 billion to 1.49 billion.

In other words, we squeezed one more visit in each,  with 79.6 site visits each in the final week of 2010 to80.7 in the final week of 2011 if we estimate Australian internet using population at 18.7m.

At an Industry level, Entertainment is the standout category in the top 10, showing 20% relative growth over the year. Much of the growth in the Entertainment category was due to just one site – YouTube.

YouTube increased Total Visits an incredible 59% from December to December, growing from 150.7 million Visits in December 2010 to 240.3 million Visits in December 2011, as can be seen below.

This pales in comparison to YouTube Mobile.

Built specifically for Wi-Fi enabled devices, YouTube Mobile is the default YouTube site for many Tablets and Smartphones.

YouTube Mobile achieved 544% growth over the year, rising more than 15 million Visits a month to hit 18.1 million Total Visits in December 2011.

Looking at this, December 2011 is rather significant. Not only is it the largest month on month gain, at 40.8%, but it’s the very same month that all sorts of  devices would have been received as presents.

All in all, it looks to have been a very Wi-Fi Christmas.

Experian Hitwise. Now you know.