In the world of search, Google has been number one for several years now, but when it comes to overall site traffic, until recently Google was number two. Now that the latest numbers are out, we see Microsoft has dropped into the second spot as Google takes the prize of the most visited site on the internet. While the two are separated by only a million unique visits (or roughly one fifth of one percent), it is expected that this gap will continue to widen.
Based on figures taken from comScore, while Microsoft enjoyed a staggering 527 million unique visits for the month of March, Google was a hair ahead at 528 million. Yahoo takes third spot with 476 million followed by Time Warner at 272 million, and eBay rounds off the top 5 at 256 million.
Interestingly enough, while Google has a few more unique visitors, the average user spends less time at Google, an average of 4.6 minutes, compared to Microsoft’s 12.8 minutes.
While Google may only have a lead of less than 1 percent over Microsoft, in the world of search the gap is much larger. According to comScore, figures released last week for March 2007 US online searches by engine, Google had 48.3 percent, followed by Yahoo at 27.5, with Microsoft brining up the rear at 10.9. Microsoft and Google saw increases over February’s numbers of 0.4% and 0.2% respectively, with Yahoo showing a decline of 0.6%.
In March, Americans conducted approximately 7.3 billion searches. Of those Google saw 3.5 billion, Yahoo had 2 billion, and Microsoft saw 798 million.