Google Chalks Up a Billion Unique Visits in May

If you’re glued to your analytics reports to get the latest traffic figures, you’ll be all too aware of how good it feels when you reach another new milestone. Maybe you’ve received 1,000 visits in a week or organic traffic has increased by 20% year on year.

The big Internet companies are no different. Statistical data is analysed relentlessly to find the latest trends and indicate the major growth areas. So no doubt there will be some pretty happy folks at Google after it was announced that they had received over a billion unique users in May.

That’s not a billion searches or page impressions, but a billion different people accessing the search engine, YouTube or one of their many other properties. This represents a huge chunk of the online community and a massive step forward for the company. Plus nobody has ever done it before, helping to reaffirm their status as the largest Internet business in operation today.

Since last year, users on Google have jumped 8.4%, which is pretty decent growth (particularly considering the starting point). Facebook leapt up by a massive 30% during the same timeframe, becoming the third most visited site with 714 million. Microsoft was second, racking up an impressive 905 million users with Yahoo back in fourth on 689 million.

The figures, provided by ComScore, show that whilst Google is dominating in the unique visitor stakes, Facebook is still well out in the lead when it comes to minutes actually spent on the site. Users of the social media giant clocked up 250 billion minutes of usage, with Microsoft up next on 204 billion and Google way back on 200 billion.

Statistics can often provide something of a smokescreen. They can help to make achievements look even greater or cover up issues. Whilst ComScore figures aren’t exact by any means, they certainly do give us a decent overview of the relative strengths of individual companies – even highlighting the regions where they are gaining most traction.

Whether the increase in users will lead to similar booms in overall searches and income remains to be seen. However, for now Google has reached and eclipsed another momentous milestone, although no doubt there will be plenty more to come in the not too distant future.