comScore claims Google at #1, Yahoo falls slightly behind

Its finally happened! For the first time in Internet history Google managed to position itself number one in the list of the most visited U.S. websites, while outrunning its long time contender, Yahoo!. According to comScore ’s last report, the defeat took place last April, after Google Sites were visited by 141,080 million surfers, followed by Yahoo!’s 140,613 million unique visitors and Microsoft standing third with 121,213 million visitors. Thanks to both YouTube’s acquisition and Picasa’s raising popularity, Google is finally the most visited network today. Despite its second position, Yahoo! is still leading in page views with 33.6 billion pages, while Google stopped at 28.7 billion.

These statistics are not mere numbers instead they reflect the core difference between Google’s and Yahoo!’s communication models, and their dissimilar strategies over the Web.

Google keeps preserving its initial search engine ideals: it does not (and does not want to) generate contents at all; so it is going through two different paths. The first path is aggregation; Google Reader, Google News or just Google Search Engine are all tools that actually do not offer anything but content already generated by other websites. The second path is user generated content, provided by services like YouTube or Picasa; tools where surfers are able to upload their own content, like videos or pictures. Let there be no doubt about it: Google DOES NOT generate content by itself, it just offers tools and services so that users can reach someone else’s contents.

Conversely speaking, even though Yahoo! is active on search engine (Yahoo! Search) and user generated content (Flickr, Del.icio.us), its main business is related to its “portal form”, where Yahoo! provides its own content to web surfers or tries to retain them within its pages. Let’s think about Yahoo! Buzz or Yahoo! Shine, two Yahoo! Channel “content oriented”, where it is possible to read the latest news about what is “hot”, and what is “in” or “out” for women.

This is why Yahoo! is still a leader in page views: users use Google to get what they want, then they exit Google sites. On the other hand, users come to Yahoo! sites and they spend more time surfing through different pages and different sections of the Yahoo! network.

Probably without YouTube and Picasa, Google would have not defeated Yahoo! and I think here is the point: there are two different strategies identified by the ways the two online giants define the word “Internet”.

Google wants to stress the “Inter” component. No matter what is interconnected or who provides the content; if its relevant and how its relevant. On the other hand, Yahoo! gives importance to the “Net” part and it aids not only to connect the part of this net, but even to generate what should be connected.

A difference that is currently imposing an influence in advertising as well, through the way in which a network usually wants to reach its potential audience. Surely this difference will keep influencing the advertising market, by setting the market’s trend on the basis of the success and the advertising model it wants to attain. As we previously mentioned, ‘the’ deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! could upset the current equilibrium.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Marketing Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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