Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 16, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In the United States, Google has taken first place from competitor Yahoo as the most popular website. This emerges from usage figures published today, Thursday, by US market-research institute comScore. The search giant recorded 18 percent more individual visits in April this year than in the same period last year. With 141.1 million unique visitors, Google is narrowly ahead of its competitor. Yahoo also grew by seven percent over the same period, but had to settle for second place with 140.6 million visits that month. Software company Microsoft came third, attracting around 121 million users to its sites in April.
The current comScore results are further evidence of Google’s growing dominance in the Internet sector. The company, which has long held the leading market position with its search engine, has recently made increased efforts to gain a foothold in other business areas. Above all in areas such as email and photo sharing, the company’s corresponding services had until then been unable to match its competitors’ usage figures. Google’s Picasa photo-sharing service, for example, competes directly with Yahoo’s Flickr. Both companies promote their services as web platforms for managing, editing and searching one’s own photos online.
In terms of page views, however, Yahoo remains in the lead. US users accessed the Internet company’s webpages around 33.6 million times in April. Google, by comparison, was well behind its rival with 28.7 million accesses in the same period. According to comScore’s analysis, the key reason is that users spend more time on Yahoo pages and return there more often than to its competitor’s service. Many users also use Google only for Internet searches. Once they have found what they are looking for, they move relatively quickly to websites operated by other providers.
At the start of 2008, comScore also confirmed Google’s leading position in Germany as the most visited website. According to that survey, online marketplace eBay secured second place with 17.6 million unique visitors, narrowly behind Google.
