Google Gaining On Yahoo According to StatMarket

Posted on May 9, 2002

WebSideStory, Inc., a provider of outsourced ebusiness intelligence services, reported that Google is rapidly gaining market share among search sites and could surpass long-time leader Yahoo if the trend continues. As of April 24, 2002, Google accounted for 31.87 percent of all search referrals worldwide -- an all-time high -- compared to Yahoo, with 36.35 percent as of the same date, according to the independently produced report from WebSideStory's StatMarket. StatMarket gathers information from more than 50 million Internet users a day to more 125,000 sites worldwide using WebSideStory's Web visitor analysis services.

Google's search referral percentage has risen sharply in the past two years, from about 1 percent in June 2000. Yahoo's percentage, meanwhile, has dropped from about 46 percent during the same time period. StatMarket's search referral statistic is the percentage of daily Internet users that arrive at a webpage via a particular search site.

"Yahoo is seeing viable competition among search engines," said Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket. "Despite Yahoo's brand recognition, the numbers show that surfers feel confident going directly to Google to search the Web."

Google has agreements with both Yahoo and Netscape to provide back-end search capability for visitors conducting searches on their sites. Google's back-end service is not included in these figures; only visitors that search directly from Google's site are included in Google's usage share.

"Yahoo's use of Google's search capabilities seems to have increased Google's visibility," Johnston added.

Coming in third place among top search referrers is MSN, which posted a referral percentage of 12.73 percent as of April 24, 2002.

Data from StatMarket (As of 4/24/02)