Google Reaches Second-Most Visited Site Status 191
Another anonymous reader has written to mention a story carried by Bloomberg, which has the news that Google is the second-most visited site on the internet. This puts it out in front of Yahoo!, which previously held the position. Google is now just behind Microsoft which, as the submitter pointed out, is the site that IE defaults to. From the article: "Visitors to Google's sites rose 9.1 percent to 475.7 million in November from a year earlier, while those to Yahoo sites rose 5.2 percent to 475.3 million, ComScore Networks Inc. said today. Both sites trail Microsoft, which had 501.7 million visitors, ComScore said. It is the first time that Mountain View, California-based Google attracted more visitors than Yahoo, reflecting Google's growing popularity outside the U.S."
firefox (Score:0, Insightful)
if so, that probably had a lot to do with the numbers as well
Remove the false MS hits and see where it stands (Score:3, Insightful)
Why so late? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is still (IMO) the best search engine out there.
Also, they make sure to attract the tech-savvy amongst us by being open-source friendly, adding lots of niche searches, their "Don't be evil"-motto, and being for so many of us the place we dream to work.
Sure, every now and then someone questions their "Don't be evil" policy, but compared to at least MS they win hands down. And Yahoo just isn't relevant, at least to me.
In short: Other search engines do marketing, Google goes viral in the very best way: By being the best, and giving us what we want.
Re:Yahoo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remove the false MS hits and see where it stand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remove the false MS hits and see where it stand (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd figure a good chunk of the people who run Firefox change their 'home' bookmark almost immediately. I did, but granted that was right back to Google's personalized homepage...
Re:Yahoo? (Score:5, Insightful)
YouTube.
IE defaults (Score:3, Insightful)
None of these results are "correct" (Score:5, Insightful)
But Google is preset as the home page on Firefox.
When Apple was shipping Macs with Netscape Navigator preinstalled, they defaulted to an Apple-themed Netscape news page. People using AT&T DSL are getting routed to a Yahoo page quite often thanks to the SBC/Yahoo marketting partnership. Lots of people leave the homepage to whatever their ISP's software sets up. I've had people call me because they lost their homepage (it got hijacked, kids changed it, whatever) and they want assistance changing it back. When we gets to the point where it's time to type in the address, they ask me what they need to put in. I tell them whatever they want to come up and they don't have a clue, many think the homepage s part of their ISP settings so to have AOL coming up instead of ______ means they're now on AOL. Few of them seem to actually use their home page, it's just what comes up and then they go where they want to from there.
To really make these figures more accurate, we would need to sets everyone's homepage to (blank) and make them all reset it, but you would still have people setting it back to things they don't use because "that's how it was before".
Re:Why so late? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why so late? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Hotmail included in the MS count (Score:4, Insightful)
Yahoo!'s redesign to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, Yahoo has made the fatal mistake of over-emphasizing form over function and is now suffering the result.
Re:IE defaults (Score:3, Insightful)
People also might not know how to change it.
Re:Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Remove the false MS hits and see where it stand (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people find adblock and noscript very useful. Don't forget about greasemonkey, which is helpful for some of the more annoying sites. The list goes on and on. While the browser itself might not be as good as Safari, for some Mac users, the ability to customize is worth it.
Re:Why so late? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remove the false MS hits and see where it stand (Score:5, Insightful)
Who did MSN pay to be the default search engine in IE7?
Hence the name: Monopoly.
Re:Why so late? (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything the opposite of what you suggest is true, now that Google is regarded as the best search engine many SEO blackhats are trying to game it. So actually it is less accurate than it was a few years ago - but still the best though.