Gmail overtakes YouTube as 10th most visited US site
Gmail may have quickly become the third most popular e-mail service but, according to a new study, it just broke into the top 10 most visited sites in the US as well. Perhaps more interestingly, Google's e-mail service passed up YouTube in order to make the list.
By David Chartier | Last updated March 13, 2009 5:10 PM CT
arstechnica.com
Gmail lags behind direct competitors in the US like Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Mail. In terms of the most visited US properties overall, though, a new study shows that Google's e-mail service knocked popular sister site YouTube out of the top 10 list for the first time.
Hitwise's report says that, during the week ending January 10, 2009, Gmail jumped up the list of most visited US sites to number 10, a spot previously ruled by YouTube.
As of last week, Gmail also ranks as Google's second most-visited property with nearly 10 percent of Google-specific traffic. First is (duh) Google.com with over 68 percent of traffic, and YouTube comes in third place with 9.3 percent. In fourth and fifth are Google Image Search and Google Maps, respectively.
Both Gmail and YouTube have experienced increasing growth over the last 12 months, though Gmail has grown faster and is seeing 70 percent more traffic than a year ago. This traffic boost is undoubtedly because of all the new features that Google has introduced over the last year, including voice and video chat, mail goggles, tasks with an iPhone/Android UI, a multiple inbox option, free IMAP, and plenty of other new features enabled by a dedicated Gmail Labs preferences area.
Google has pushed aggressively to steal market share away from Yahoo and Microsoft. The former has been in a rut, charging for features like POP for some time, and Windows Live Mail just gained POP access. Gmail's impressive feature set appears to be doing good things for the company's market share among free e-mail providers. |
