Although the difference in their page views is very minimal, it’s still interesting to note that Gmail has overtaken YouTube the past two weeks. This was according to some data released by Hitwise.
Whereas in the past, YouTube has always been the 10th most visited websites, until sometime in Jan. 10, 2009 when Gmail first took YouTube’s place. Since then, the two Google properties have been exchanging places.
For instance for the week ending Mar. 7, 2009, Gmail got .92% market share of all U.s. Internet visits. YouTube went down to no.11 with .87% market share. Likewise among Google’s Internet Properties, Gmail has also overtaken YouTube.
Another interesting point is the fact that Gmail’s top 3 sources of traffic were Google.com, Facebook and Yahoo! Mail. In case you’re wondering how come Yahoo! Mail is one of the top traffic referral to Gmail, credit it to the fact that most users who maintain a Yahoo Mail account are probably forwarding their Yahoo emails to their Gmail. I’m one of those users by the way.
So, what does this data say? A lot of things really. One way of looking at it could be the growing interest of users to Gmail the past months. Thanks to the slew of new Gmail features that are being launched in the Gmail Labs.
Or is it possible that YouTube’s eyeballs are decreasing? This is a possibility especially since YouTube’s rivals are beefing up their service to elicit interests among users. Flickr for one has recently introduced some enhancements to its Flickr Video upload service.
Well, one thing is clear though Google must tend to Gmail’s conditions closely. The increasing page traffics seem to backfiring on Gmail as it has been experiencing series of outage recently.