Following on closely my post on Tuesday – Users Spending More Time on Yahoo than Google – GigaOM have given some reasons for exactly why people use Yahoo! so much. With statistics made available by ComScore, Yahoo were found to be the top source for news, finance, sports, entertainment and mail.
Their stranglehold on the online news industry has ensured that Yahoo! maintained a high level of credibility and popularity as a brand. Unfortunately, critics might suggest that their popularity for the aforementioned news and information sources masks their inefficiency in their primary sector – search.
Google are still running away with the search engine market worldwide. Yahoo! retains a strong second place in the US, however elsewhere their status has waned; particularly with the update’s Microsoft have now included in Bing. Their domination as a news source will come as a welcome relief, but I doubt there are many who would argue that their SERPs could do with some significant improvement.
Hopefully the added competition will help spur Yahoo! on and ensure that Google face the toughest competition possible moving forward.
What do you think?