Google Tops Web Traffic List, Followed by Yahoo and Facebook

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 2:04AM EST · Published Oct 22, 9:25AM EDT

Google Tops Web Traffic List, Followed by Yahoo and Facebook — © courtesy of Alphabet Inc.

Search tops portal and social media, according to new data about visits to America’s largest websites in September. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google topped the list with 234 million unique visitors for the month, according to comScore.

Second on the list is Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), which probably will be bought by Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). It had 207 million unique visitors last month. Yahoo has the bad fortune that its bread and butter, online display ads, have dropped in price. While native and video ads have replaced this somewhat, Google and Facebook have as much as two-thirds of online ad revenue. According to Bloomberg:

Google, the leading Internet search provider, and Facebook, the biggest social network operator, claimed 64 percent of that revenue, according to Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. Google scooped up $30 billion and Facebook gathered $8 billion, while other smaller companies lost market share, the analyst noted.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) had 205 million unique visitors.

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Following that is Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) with 192 million unique visitors. This includes MSN and visits to Microsoft company sites.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), the online retail company, sits next at 184 million unique visitors. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is well down the list in 22nd place, with 93 million unique visitors. It, and the revenue it gets online, show something of the wall that Wal-Mart has to climb.

Two media properties are next: CBS Interactive from CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) at 168 million and Comcast Corp.’s (NASDAQ: CMCSA) NBCUniversal at 163 million. This includes all visitors to the cable, broadcast and studio sites, and gives some idea of why AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) would want Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), the sites of which are broken into pieces. Turner Digital, the largest of them, had unique visitors of 132 million.

Behind CBS and Comcast, AOL, a division of Verizon, has 158 million. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is next at 153 million.

Among social media companies, LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) had 124 million, Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) 113 million and Pinterest 98 million.

Mode Media, which closed in September, had 93 million unique visitors, which shows how little raw audience means.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.