Media

Google Tops Website Visits in November

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: December 25, 2015 9:08 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 3:43 pm

Google’s site traffic reached 247 million unique visitors in November, according to comScore’s study of all desktop and mobile traffic to U.S. websites. The figure is especially impressive because the total for the entire U.S. Internet audience was 260 million. The figures show why Google has been so successful and why its market value is likely to continue to rise.

Google, a part of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) was well ahead of second place Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), which posted 219 million unique visitors in November. Although a comparison to Facebook’s global membership is not an exact one, that number has reached 1.3 billion.

In third place, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sites had unique visitor traffic of 202 million. Based on that number, the case the company’s core Web business has no value is absurd. Yahoo may not have tapped that potential, but that does not mean it does not exist due in large part to its size.

Dominating e-commerce, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) sites ranked fourth with 193 million unique visitors in November. The high-end of its revenue forecast for the current quarter is $36.75 billion. Amazon traffic gives it such a large advantage over other retailers that reaching the number seems highly likely.

Google’s dominance of search, and its operating system Android, have helped push its market cap to $524 billion, up 41% in the last year. Google has a slim chance to catch Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the measurement. Apple’s market cap is $602 billion.

Google continues to grow faster than many analysts expected. In the most recent quarter,

Revenues of $18.7 billion and revenue growth of 13% year over year; constant currency revenue growth of 21% year over year
Substantial growth of mobile search revenue, complemented by contributions from YouTube and Programmatic Advertising
GAAP and non-GAAP operating income of $4.7 billion and $6.1 billion, respectively
GAAP and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.73 and $7.35, respectively
Strong operating cash flow of $6.0 billion

The mobile gain is among the most impressive, as consumers rush to use portable devices as their primary means to use the Internet.

comScore’s November numbers show how strong it is in audience, which has contributed to its growth.

Methodology: comScore, a global media measurement and analytics company, has released its monthly ranking of U.S. online activity at the top digital media properties for November 2015 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix and Media Metrix Multi-Platform services.