New figures have revealed the most visited websites in the US during the month of January.

Nielsen Online reported that Google remained the most visited site in the country, with 124 million hits in the month.

Following behind the search engine were Microsoft (121 million), Yahoo! (113 million) and Time Warner (104 million).

The study also showed how long users had spent on these sites, with Time Warner recording an average use time of three hours and nineteen minutes.

In contrast, users of Wikipedia - the ninth most visited site - only spent 18 minutes on the website.

In related news, Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang has reportedly urged investors to reject Microsoft's bid to acquire the company.

He said that the growth in online advertising meant that Yahoo! was in a great position to make future profits.

Yang pointed out that the online ad market is expected to grow from $45 billion last year to $75 billion in 2010 and that Yahoo! wanted "to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution - of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders".