Hot topic for August – Yahoo passes Google for the first time since 2011, according to ComScore’s monthly Top 50 US Web Properties list. Many news outlets and online bloggers have reported that this could be the big break Yahoo needs to pull themselves over the top of the mountain and reach the success that outdates them.
But is this win for Yahoo really all that is cracked up to be? I don’t think so. As it turns out, many of these major news outlets and bloggers have reported on this using generalities and fail to address what the data truly says.
As stated above, ComScore reported this news in their monthly Top 50 U.S. Web Properties list. The key words here are “Web Properties.” What this specific report from ComScore doesn’t speak to is Search Market Share, which, for companies engaging in traditional Search Engine Marketing, is likely more important.
In fact, the most recent ComScore analysis performed on search engine market share, released a week prior to the Web Properties list, shows the exact opposite – growth for Google and struggles for Yahoo. Yahoo reached an all time low in their share of the search market at just 11.3% in July 2013, a decrease of 2 percent from the year prior. Google, on the other hand, saw their market share increase 0.2% from 2012 to 67% in July 2013.
While Yahoo has generated more traffic to their web properties than Google, there are 6 times as many people searching online using Google instead of Yahoo.
So is there cause for concern? Should marketers shift their search strategies away from Google and pursue Yahoo as much as possible? We don’t think so.