Mountain View, California-based Internet giant Google and its collection of Web properties remained the top  online destination in the United States in June, holding on to the position it gained for the first time from in May from Yahoo, according to a new report from Web traffic analysis company comScore. Google also continued to rank as the most popular U.S. search engine site with 61.5 percent of the search market, despite a slight drop from a May tally of 61.8 percent, according to a separate report from the Reston, Virginia-based research company. Google Remains Top U.S. Web Property As Search Share Falls Slightly Until May Google had held the number-two position on the comScore Media Metrix monthly report of top U.S. Web destinations among consumers -- a measure that groups the major online players and the various Web sites they operate -- behind long-time leader Yahoo. The new June data released Monday showed Google sites receiving 140.1 million unique visitors during the month, slightly ahead of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo's 140 million. Microsoft's collection of sites had 119 million visitors during June according to comScore, while Time Warner's AOL and its properties had 110 million. Possibly bolstered by Apple's release of a new version of its iPhone, which was announced in June, the company's collection of sites moved up two positions into the number ten spot with 45 million visitors. Disney Online and Adobe's collection of sites were among the fastest-growing during June, moving up the list by four positions each to hold the 21 and 22 rank on the list respectively with about 30 million visitors each, according to comScore. AOL's Platform-A online advertising business led comScore's AdFocus rankings for June -- a measure of the reach of digital advertising networks -- having reached 90 percent of nearly 190 million U.S. consumers during the month, followed by Yahoo's ad network which saw an 83 percent reach, Google's network with an 81 percent reach, and Specific Media, which held a 78 percent reach according the the report. Monthly Search Market Figures Showed Rare Gains For Yahoo, Microsoft Core industry data released by comScore Friday showed number-two U.S. search engine site Yahoo and number-three Microsoft making rare gains on leader Google, albeit slight ones. Yahoo saw its share of the search market rise by 0.3 percent from May, to 20.9 percent. Microsoft saw its audience increase by 0.7 percent in June, to 9.2 percent, according to the monthly comScore qSearch analysis data. ComScore excludes searches for "mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the  core domain" in its core search figures. The fourth position was held by IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com with 4.3 percent of the U.S. search market, a drop of 0.2 percent from May. Rounding out the top five during June was AOL, which held a 4.1 percent share, down 0.4 percentage points from May. Consumers in the U.S. conducted 11.5 billion searches during June according to comScore, a total that was 7 percent higher than during May. Topping the core search figures were Google's collection of sites with more than 7 billion core searches, a 6 percent increase from May, followed by Yahoo properties which increased by 9 percent to 2.4 billion, and Microsoft properties totaling just over 1 billion core searches -- an increase of 15 percent since May, comScore said. While Google had held the top spot in Internet search share for years, Yahoo had maintained its position as the most visited Web destination, a category that includes visits not only to search engines but to a company's other Web properties such as Web-based e-mail and photo and video sharing sites, until May, when comScore figures showed that sites owned by Google received 467,000 more U.S. visitors during April than those owned by Yahoo, with both firms' sites attracting over 140 million unique visitors, a slim margin recorded by a research firm that has faced concerns from some analysts who see such figures as relatively small and potentially flawed samplings of the actual online activity of hundreds of millions of Web users. Google Remains Top U.S. Web Property As Search Share Falls Slightly On Thursday Google reported second-quarter revenues of $2.8 billion outside the United States, accounting for 52 percent of its total revenues and an increase over both the previous quarter's 51 percent and the previous year's 48 percent during the same quarter. Google's total worldwide income for the quarter was $5.37 billion. The fastest-growing segment during June was the online car rental category, which comScore said grew by 4 percent to 6.5 million visitors. The category was led by the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company, which saw 3.4 million visitors, and the Avis Budget Group with saw 2.6 million visitors during the month. Search engine market share figures from another Web traffic research and analysis firm, Hitwise, showed Google holding a bigger share than comScore did, with some 69.17 percent of all searches in the U.S. for the four week period ending on June 28. Hitwise showed Yahoo in the number-two spot with a 19.62 percent share, Microsoft in the number-three position with 5.46 percent, and Ask.com holding the fourth spot with 4.17 percent. The company said that the other 42 search engine firms it tracked during the period accounted for a meager 1.7 percent of all U.S. searches. Related Links:
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7:20 pm on July 22, 2008 (utc 0)