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Porn pulls more hits than searches
And Google still top of the search heap

By

Published: Friday 04 June 2004

Online porn sites get about three times more visits than the top web search engines, including market leader Google, a research firm says.

Visits to the top three search engines - which virtually dominate their sector - accounted for 5.5 per cent of all internet visits by US users during the week ending 29 May, said Hitwise, a California-based company that tracks online activity.

During that time, Google garnered 2.7 per cent of all web visits while Yahoo Search and MSN Search received 1.7 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively, Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise, told Reuters.

Google, which has become so popular that its name is synonymous with search, is moving toward an initial public offering that is expected to be a blockbuster.

The three leading search providers fall into a subcategory Hitwise calls 'search engines and directories', which covers 1,944 sites. The subcategory, which accounted for 13.8 per cent of all internet visits, also includes AskJeeves.com, Yahoo.com and Microsoft's MSN.com.

Other large Hitwise categories include 'adult' at 18.8 per cent, 'entertainment' at 8 per cent, 'business and finance' at 7.4 per cent and 'shopping and classifieds' at 7 per cent.

In a separate report published late last month, Hitwise said that between August and April, Google remained the most visited search site and was alone among the three top players in gaining market share within its subcategory.

Hitwise also found that fast-growing comparison shopping sites such as Shopping.com, NexTag and Bizrate are getting fewer referrals from web search providers - meaning that users are either going directly to the niche sites or finding other routes to them, thereby cutting search engines out of lucrative shopping clicks.

The same appears to be true for top travel sites, Tancer said.