Google vs. Yahoo - Alexa Traffic Rankings

According to Alexa, Yahoo has always outranked Google. However, for the last couple of years, the rankings have been very close. Yahoo has been number 1. And Google is dead on its heels at number 2. But why hasn’t Google been able to outrank Yahoo?

To come up with an answer, we took a look at Alexa’s traffic graphs, namely the Daily Reach graph and the Page Views graph. The combination of these two statistics is how Alexa calculates the actual Alexa rank.

The Daily Reach Analysis

The first statistic, Daily Reach, is very surprising. According to the Alexa data, Google reaches a larger percentage of internet users than does Yahoo. See the graph below.

The Page Views Analysis

On the other hand, Yahoo far surpasses Google with the Page View statistic. According to the graph below, for example, you see that Yahoo users view almost twice as many pages as do Google users.

Based on these statistics, it is doubtful that Google will overtake Yahoo’s number 1 position any time soon. To do so, it would have to find some way to narrow the Page View divide. Currently, Yahoo’s services are better at promoting multiple page views than are Google’s services. However, as Google continues to diversify its products and branch out into new areas, it is likely that we might see Google’s rank increase.