Google Tops Web Traffic List, Followed by Yahoo and Facebook
October 22, 2016 by Douglas A. McIntyreSearch 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.
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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