X

Study: Google is top Web property globally

Google moves past Microsoft in number of unique visitors, comScore says.

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
See full bio
Elinor Mills

For the first time, Google has surpassed Microsoft in worldwide visits to its Web sites, according to recent figures from comScore on Wednesday. Google sites got 528 million unique visitors in March, up 13 percent from a year ago and 1 million visitors more than Microsoft's 527 million visitors, which was a 4 percent increase from a year ago. Yahoo had 476.3 million visitors in March, a 1 percent rise from a year ago.

"Google's position as the most-visited worldwide property is a testament to the continued growth of the search market," said comScore spokesman Andrew Lipsman. "It also reflects the dramatic traffic growth to YouTube.com during the past year, which now reaches more than 160 million visitors worldwide."

Google remains the top search engine with nearly half of all searches, besting Yahoo (with 27.5 percent market share) and Microsoft (at 11 percent share) by a fairly wide margin, according to comScore.