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Yahoo Tops Portal Market In Visitors
linumax writes "Yahoo Inc. continues to lead the portal market in the number of unique visitors, and is also the top destination for news, a market research firm says. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company led the top 10 Web sites among U.S. home and work Internet users with 101.3 million visitors in August, EMarketer Inc., said. Second was Microsoft Corp.'s site with 95.6 million, followed by its MSN portal, 92.1 million; Google, 80.4 million; America Online Inc., 75.7 million; EBay Inc., 55.2 million; MapQuest, 39 million; Amazon.com, 37.6 million, RealNetworks, 36.4 million; and the Weather Channel, 31.2 million."
I'd argue that raw numbers don't matter with respect to Yahoo. I mean sure, they're paying a whole lot in bandwidth and all, but their site is so cluttered that I never have any idea what I'm looking at. There could be ads for free hundred dollar bills and I wouldn't even notice.
I can't tell you how many times I've gone to yahoo to find their directory of sites and given up and gone to DMOZ instead.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
I've been a Google user for years, but I am starting to use Yahoo more often. At first it started because I was at Yahoo for a different reason, and the search was there, so I did it. Boom, less spam results. I went to Google to compare and there is more spam in the rankings.
Try searching for a review of a commerical product like a TV by model number. Google will fill the search with places selling the product, not with reviews. If Eopinions or Amazon does not have a review, you're screwed. You'll be buying blind.
Google to me was most usefull as a NON-COMMERCIAL tool, to find information, not sellers. There are plenty of places to buy, and I know their websites. I don't need google to show me electronic stores.
I think it may be due to the fact that programs like realplayer usually go to a homepage when you launch the program. As far as I can tell its just an ordinary web browser built into the program, so they probably included those visits in their numbers.
Considering that Google doesn't offer anywhere close to the amount of crap that Yahoo and MSN do I think Google is doing far better. Yahoo, MSN, AOL, all offer a million different services and Google's primary function is searching. The maintenence costs for those sites must be through the roof, whereas Google can spend the $$$ on research and innovation.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/All their applications phoning home of course. No spyware though, I am sure. If you can't trust Real, who can you trust?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
..and in yesterday's news, new study finds that 'Google Users more Wealthy, Net Savvy', which confirms something I've known for quite some time now:
We're outnumbered.
The fastest way to get to your favorite sites is to bookmark their search form query boxes in firefox using a keyword. I can bring up slashdot or a google image search or an imdb page or a wikipedia article in new tabs, while blindfolded, with a couple of keystrokes, instead of wasting time clicking pretty widgets. You can even tell if the text you were looking for is on the resulting page by the sounds emitted by find-as-you-type.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Not only that, when you have a typo in a URL, you are often taken to MSN Search if you are an IE user. I never go there by my own free will, but my browser will end up there on its own.
Hey, all I know is that the majority of the hits to my blog come from Yahoo and MSN. My page titles are crystal clear about what you'll be seeing before you arrive, so I'm not too worried about a lack of "quality" in my site traffic. My hits from Google are from people who search 2 to 5 pages deep in search results before finding me. Much of the time, Google ranks other blogs linking to my post higher than my posts, even for searches which involve my web site's name. So I humbly suggest that Yahoo and MSN aren't popular merely because people are sheep, but because those sheep have found contentment in being fed.
How did real networks get so high. I never have visited their website.
That's why they are at #9. Once you start visiting they'll probably hit Top 5.
Wouldn't it be better to calculate which portal is the top portal based on the actual number of users that click a portal link?
I have customers who leave yahoo.com as their home page but always click a bookmark or head to another search engine to actually start browsing. I have no idea why people don't change the home page, but even some of my family works this way. Every time they open their web browser, yahoo pops up, and then they head off in a different direction.
With the various search toolbars, will the portal be as important as it was over the past decade? My homepage is blank -- especially on my primary browser, my PDA. Even with a fast connection I don't like the delay in popping up a start page.
I go look at yahoo about once every few months and just can't handle the site. Too much text, way too many colors, and it doesn't respond very quickly on some of my older (IE-based) PCs. I guess the average person doesn't have very much knowledge of proper use of color, text and overall layout. Yahoo reminds me of the beach blanket bingo madness from the 60s.
That is probably at least partly true. I use "my.yahoo.com" because I've been using it for something like 10 years now. I even ran the Yahoo! ticker for a while. Even though I've switched to new accounts on Yahoo! at least three times that I can recall, I still go back to it because I'm used to how it works. That comfort level is worth something, no matter how much I enjoy learning/using new "stuff".
About the only complaint I have is their advertising. Adblock goes a long way, but frankly, it's really annoying when they split their dating service ads into cells of a sub-frame.
Huh?
I completely disagree. Yahoo! has been innovating in many areas since they first began. Not necessarily in bells and whistles (although they do tend to have lots of good features) but in core technology, uptime, and performance. I'm not sure what half-assed product you're referring to in particular (I'm guessing you're choosing to compare Y!Mail with GMail, since its hip to give google the advantage there), but in general Yahoo! has been a huge innovator in web technology (specifically portal related), and continues to put out quality services on all fronts.
Variety is the spice of life, and I think there's a market for both the "all-in-one" Yahoo-type solution just as much as the "function before form" Google method. Your personal preference shouldn't affect your judgement towards the other. I personally use both: Yahoo when I'm bored and Google when I need to get a job done fast.
I don't want to be a falmebait but the title of the story is kinda wrong. I tought that "wow, yahoo has more users than google? MSN has more users than google? REAL has more users than google?" It comes out that the stats are for U.S. only.
The titel should read: "Yahoo Tops Portal Market In Visitors in US" or something like that.
though not surprised by the large number of /.ers on this topic whose comments are so Google-worshipping. Google has done some very good things, but I think people should give Yahoo a little credit for having come out with a very large number of services, often beating others (including Google) to the web with that service. Maybe, just *maybe*, that's being reflected a *little* in these numbers? I'm not trying to flame Google, or say Yahoo is the bee's knees (god i feel old), but I certainly think that Yahoo deserves a little more credit than people give it. Google has all these great tools, most of which I've been using courtesy of Yahoo long before Google offered them. No, numbers != quality necessarily, but "Google" does not automatically equal "best" or "quality" either. Of all people, we, the people here ought to be most interested in choosing a toolset for its quality, not the press it gets, or the company that makes it.
If Yahoo is so much better than Google, than why does GOOG have more than double the market capitalization [yahoo.com] of YHOO ?
Greed.
Need two?
Irrational exuberance.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
MSN is the default IE browser homepage.
Yahoo the default browser homepage for many DSL providers, including SBC.
Both are the "choice" of people who don't make choices.
Google is a default homepage for people who choose to download Firefox.
Google is also clearly what most people are using to search the web (webmasters, check your web stats - its 85% Google referrals)
So Google is the choice for people who actually choose.
Looking at Yahoo/MSN vs Google's approach makes that pretty obvious: Google is a tool to use, while Yahoo/MSN is for tools to use.
AOL owns MapQuest, and 80.4 million + 55.2 million=135.6 million. Sure you can argue that Google+Blogger or Yahoo!+Flickr, but if AOL changed the MapQuest URL to something like MapQuest.AOL.com, then would AOL be first?
Click here if you use MapQuest
Click here if you use AOL
really 867993
Karma schkarma
What is amazing about Yahoo is the number of page views per visit. This is a really important metric for any business counting on advertizing revenues. The numbers are here (also a google.com comparison). Compare that to Google's numbers. Google's numbers are 2-3 times lower!
Simpy
I'm guessing most of it is because many people use the RealPlayer program, and whenever it connects, it opens up the RealPlayer homepage in the player itself, so that probably accounts for at least 50% of their hits.
Your prediction started coming true like five years ago. Bravo!
As a quick look at Alexa would point out, 50% of pages on yahoo are on mail.yahoo.com. 90% or more of those pages are refreshes to see messgages or even your inbox because of how their mail reader system works.
Compare that to the G-mail system (only 6% of their pages by Alexa's count link) that's smart enough to allow you to check all your mail without a page refresh something like Alexa will pick up. That's where so many of Yahoo's page views come from: a dumb mail system.
www.yahoo.com is total, crap, I agree with you.
But http://my.yahoo.com/ is awesome. Its totally customizeable, you can add your own RSS feeds, integrates with all your Yahoo services like calerndering, etc.
It is basically what Google personal wants to be, but isn't yet (My Yahoo! has several items you can't find on Google personal, like TV listings for my area, a calender that syncs with exchange and my PDA, and a better stock ticker, for example).
Try it out. I don't understand why it isn't the default start page at www.yahoo.com either. It is much better. Maybe some people are just too attached to the old Yahoo! where you start at the directory.
That's because a third-party magazine posts its stuff on Yahoo! News.
At least now we know why your Dad always brings up "he's not the brains of the family, but he's still our son" point, whenever he talks about you.
I like mapquest for a few reasons. I use their directions feature often. If I've never driven to a place, it has become habit to look at mapquest to see what roads they recommend. I like how they show the milage per road, and the trips total milage.
I guess mapquest was the first service I used for maps and directions. I checked out google maps (or maybe it was yahoo). I surf with javascript and active x off, and google maps would not load the picture of the map. Mapquest works with my IE settings at a very restrictive level.
Maybe I am lazy. When I find something that works, I tend to stick with it. Other services have not given me a reason to switch. And I can't think of anything else that could be offered to make mapquest better. I am happy with them.