Google Sends More Traffic to Yahoo! than Yahoo! Itself!

In recent research from Hitwise that may surprise some (and perhaps not others), it appears that properties owned by Yahoo! actually receive more traffic from Google rather than from Yahoo! Search.

Here's how much traffic each Yahoo! property receives from both Google and Yahoo! Search as per the Hitwise data:

Yahoo! Answers showed the biggest difference, with 49% of its U.S. traffic coming from Google in June, while only 20% was from a Yahoo! search.

Statistics like this beg the question... "would Microsoft have actually gained from its proposed takeover of Yahoo! - specifically its search assets?"

Heather Hopkins, vice president of research for Hitwise, made this observation in her blog:

I'll admit, I went into this analysis thinking that the data would show that Yahoo was worth more together--I thought that the sum of the whole would be greater than the parts. However after looking more closely at the data, I'm not sure that is necessarily true.

Whether Yahoo is better kept whole or split up I can't say. What I can say is that the parts of Yahoo are quite valuable and wouldn't necessarily be lost without the search engine.

The latest rumour circling is that Microsoft is going to try again to purchase Yahoo! Search, however looking at these latest stats I would advise Microsoft to steer clear.

Posted by Courtney Mills at 3:06 AM GMT