Much criticism has been heaped upon Yahoo as the company continues to lag far behind Google in terms of search market share. Those critics, however, might be surprised to find out that Yahoo users actually spend more time on site than those who frequent Google’s online offerings.
Hitwise reported earlier this week that Google now boasts at staggering 63 percent of the search market, compared to Yahoo’s 21 percent.
If the gap is that overwhelming when it comes to searches, one would be inclined to believe that Google also exerts a similar amount of dominance over Yahoo in other usage statistics as well. It’s a reasonable conclusion, to be sure.
If you believe that, however, you’re dead wrong.
The folks over at Compete compiled a survey of the top 20 U.S. websites according to time spent online. MySpace is the clear winner, boasting an impressive 11.9 percent of U.S. users. Sitting comfortably in second position, however, we find Yahoo with an 8.5 percent share.
Google lies in the middle of the pack with 2.1 percent of users, trailing both eBay and MSN.
So why is Google, a company who clearly has Yahoo whipped in the search market, lagging so far behind in total time spent online? This commenter outlines some compelling reasons:
To list a few:
• Yahoo Mail is the #1 mail provider in existence today. Larger than Gmail.
• Yahoo Finance is probably the most trafficked Finance portal for stock quotes.
• Y! Answers has also now become the #1 answer service on the web.
• In addition, Yahoo also has Personals (personals.yahoo.com), Autos (autos.yahoo.com), Music (music.yahoo.com), HotJobs (hotjobs.yahoo.com), Yahoo Messenger, *Search*, News, Maps, etc, etc
[It] all boils down to A LOT of content.
It is most likely that mainstream U.S.A. does not leave Gmail up all day, or check out Google Trends often. The data backs this.
It appears that reports of Yahoo’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated. (Okay, so I like clichs. Sue me.)
Perhaps if Google wants to catch up in terms of time spent online, the company should start making use of all that search traffic by advertising its other services. I meet people almost every day — intelligent people — that have no clue Gmail even exists.
Not coincidentally, those people almost unanimously use Yahoo for their e-mail needs.
Food for thought, I suppose.
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Joe is a staff writer for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
