Yahoo! squeaked past Google for web traffic

Yahoo overtakes Google in web for the first time since 2011.  traffic ComScore reported Yahoo! beat Google without counting Tumblr.

          For the first time in two years, Yahoo has beaten Google in ComScore’s monthly ranking of top web properties.

Mayer steered Yahoo past Google in U.S. Web traffic in July — the first time Yahoo has claimed the top spot since May 2011, according to market researcher ComScore.

 Yahoo’s collected sites raked in 196.6 million visitors as opposed to Google’s, which attracted 192.3 million. Yahoo is breaking Google's two-year stranglehold on the top spot. The score for July represents a 20 per cent increase on 2012’s performance when Yahoo ranked third, behind both Google and Microsoft.

Games, e-mail and real estate led the way for Yahoo, which had closed the gap with Google over the past few months, ComScore spokesman Andrews Lipsman said. The comScore report is inclusive of desktop traffic only. A more comprehensive report is due out next week. Though Google typically beats Yahoo handily in mobile traffic, Mayer has noted that Yahoo has seen a recent uptick in mobile.

The rankings of unique visitors to US sites includes a number of different web properties for each company but did not include Yahoo’s recent acquisition Tumblr (it came 28th in the ranking).

This news is strong sign that Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer is succeeded in reinvigorating the old brand. However, despite the clear nature of comScore’s league table, the reasons behind Yahoo’s new position are less clear-cut. Andrew Lipsman from ComScore has commented that the change isn’t necessarily due to Mayer’s string of recent acquisitions for the company:

“[It] seems there are other factors at play, and given how close Yahoo Sites and Google have been in recent months, it can likely just be normal seasonal/month-to-month fluctuations.”

It’s also of note that comScore’s figures do not include how many people use the companies’ search engines, a market in which Google continues to dominate 67 per cent of the market in June. Yahoo only attracted 12 per cent of net users over the same period, with Microsoft’s Bing taking second place with 17 per cent.

Something more is going on at Yahoo: Shares have nearly doubled in value since Mayer took over; it has acquired Tumblr and other valuable properties; and Yahoo has refreshed its product line. Mayer even found time to polish her fashion bona fide in an eye-popping Vogue photo spread and profile this month.

Mayer said in a recent Vogue interview that Yahoo will thrive in the transition from desktop to smaller screen mobile devices by returning to its "daily habits" roots."Email, maps, weather, news, stock quotes, share photos, group communication, sports scores, games. You're listening to what people do on their mobile phones," she told Vogue. "And it sounds like a list of what Yahoo does."

Marissa Mayer, the latest CEO of Yahoo, in her first earnings call was proud about the company’s profit of 35 cents a share on revenue of $1.09 billion. She spoke a lot about her plans to venture into the Smartphone market. “I grade our progress on mobile as an A,” Mayer said. “We invested heavily and are seeing incredible growth as a result.”"Yahoo’s future is mobile and we are delivering our products mobile first,” she added.

Mayer said that the company would be improvising on its core products which are mail, adds, mobile and the news. “[we're] going back to our roots as a consumer Internet company focused on consumer experience,” she said.

Since she took up the job, she has created a new working environment, recruiting a lot of innovative blood and some colleges from her older work place, Google.  ”Companies are all about people, and the companies with the best talent win,” Mayer said.

With the buying of Tumblr and other companies Yahoo has been trying very hard to increase its revenue. Mayer said that in the near future, a half of the companies employees would be working on improving its mobile applications.  ”The mobile wave is a huge wave for us to ride,” she said.

If according to the promises that Marissa Mayer made, Yahoo will in a few years time be among the big players in the mobile market and the giants of the internet, competing with Google, Microsoft and Facebook, though, currently, Yahoo does not have any of its applications anywhere near the global players.

Mayer faces a unique opportunity to remake her workplace and lead her employees in a great experiment of making Yahoo more family-friendly