According to the San Francisco Chronicle and comScore, Google has taken the lead against Microsoft as the world’s most visited Internet property.
Beating out Microsoft by just over one million users, Gogogle recorded 528 million unique visitors in March while Microsoft enjoyed 527 million uniques during the same month.
Reasons for Google’s leap frogging of Microsoft include:
- Their acquisition of YouTube boosting unique visits
- Google’s european popularity
- Sluggish Microsoft growth
More from Verne Kopytoff at the SF Chronicle (who also notes that time spent on Google properties is quite low):
ComScore’s estimates are based on tracking 2 million Internet users across the globe, from home and work (but not from Internet cafes or schools). Only users 15 and older are factored into calculations.
“Unique” visitors are a key measurement in the Internet industry, showing how many individuals visited a particular Web site in a given month. Users are counted only once, even those who may visit a site multiple times during the period.
Unique users, however, isn’t the only statistic that matters online. For example, Google still trails in the amount of time global users spend on its properties: an average of 4.6 minutes compared to 12.8 minutes on Microsoft.
They are buying a lot of websites. I knew this day would come.
Btw, according to alexa Yahoo at #1
But can we really believe Alexa?
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ComScore’s estimates could have a tolerance of 15% or more(Plus or Minus). A person visiting Google at his office and later at his home and in emergency, from a cafe might be taken as three different unique visitors. 200 different people visiting Google in a cyber cafe might be taken as repeat visitors.
It was always bound to happen, Google offer much more to the general person than Microsoft and the fact that most of what they offer is free always helps as well – just think how much Microsoft would ask you to pay if they made a version of Google Analytics!