Google winning searches, but losing portal battle

Google better at search, Yahoo better at being a portal

22 May 2006 11:22 GMT / By Stuart Miles

New figures by Hitwise, online competitive intelligence site that looks at internet traffic, suggest that although Google is winning on search, it when it comes to news, email and financial services it is Yahoo and Microsoft that win out.

The results, which looked at internet use in America show that while Google commands 47.4% share of all internet searches compared to Yahoo on 16% and MSN on 11.5%.

However, when it comes to mail services it is Yahoo that dominates with 42.4% followed by Microsoft's Hotmail on 22.9% and Google's gmail commanding a very poor 2.54%.

The numbers are similar for news and finance services. Again according to Hitwise Yahoo gets 6.3% compared to Google's 1.9% while the gap is even bigger for buiness and finance offerings. Yahoo Finance gets 34.9% compared to MSN Money Central's 13.4% and Google Finance's .29%

When it came to travel maps all three lost out to Mapquest, which according to Hitwise gets over 56% of all internet searches in the US. This compares to Yahoo's 20.5%, Google Maps 7.5% MSN Virtual Earth on 4.3% and Google Earth just 2%.