Looks like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is doing something right. Web traffic tracker comScore today issued its monthly report on the top-visited websites in the U.S., and lo and behold, the still-struggling Internet portal came out ahead of Google, the perennial leader for awhile now.
Despite other reports that date Yahoo’s last time atop the charts back to 2008, comScore tells me that Yahoo led the list was in May 2011. And comScore VP of industry analysis Andrew Lipsman says it’s not because of the addition of Tumblr, which Yahoo bought in May for a little over a billion bucks. Tumblr is listed separately, coming in at a respectable No. 28.
Still, Lipsman points out that even with its troubles in recent years, Yahoo has never been far behind, so the gain is probably due chiefly to seasonal or month-to-month variations. Indeed, Yahoo with almost 197 million unique monthly visitors only barely pulled ahead of Google, with 192 million. Google’s traffic includes not only its search page but YouTube as well.
Microsoft, Facebook, and AOL rounded out the top five.
There’s another consideration. These numbers don’t include mobile traffic. Obviously that’s potentially huge. Despite recent improvements, Yahoo is widely considered to be considerably behind in mobile, which might make Yahoo’s regained lead here less impressive.
All that said, Yahoo’s showing is an important symbol that Mayer can rightfully point to as an indication that the company at least is no longer losing ground. Mayer herself noted during Yahoo’s second-quarter conference call that its traffic had risen in June from a year ago, which she said was unprecedented for an established company that had been on the decline.