Yahoo’s page views were down 9 percent month-over-month in November, allowing MySpace owner Fox Interactive Media to take the overall lead in that category for the first time, according to comScore data highlighted in an emailed note today from UBS Investment Research.
UBS, while noting the unreliability of comScore data, cites Yahoo’s warning that use of Ajax may decrease its page views, making measurement of unique visitors and user engagement more important factors. Last month, Yahoo saw a negligible change in unique visitors, and a 5 percent decrease in average minutes spent per day per user.
Yahoo is still king in unique visitors, with nearly 130 million in November, for the top spot in comScore’s survey. Fox Interactive, while showing growth (565 percent year-over-year!) is in sixth, after Time Warner, Microsoft, Google, and eBay.
Wall Street didn’t seem to care much, with shares of News Corp down 25 cents to to $22.35, and shares of Yahoo up 15 cents to $26.49.
We’d previously highlighted a Hitwise report in July that claimed MySpace’s share of visits had passed Yahoo. At the time, both Yahoo and comScore vehemently denied the accuracy of the report.
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[...] Original post by Liz Gannes [...]
10 comments so far
2:11 PM PT
These numbers are a little unreliable but what must be of concern to Yahoo is the 5 percent decrease in average minutes spent per day by user. That is quite significant. As for MySpace, so much for a reported decline and people abandoning the site.
2:25 PM PT
“UBS, while noting the unreliability of comScore data, cites Yahoo’s waning that use of Ajax may decrease its page views”
It WILL decrease page views. That’s plain and simple, weather your talking yahoo finance (charts, quotes) to the new Yahoo Mail interface — page views will go down, since asynchronous interaction doesn’t need pages to fully reload
2:50 PM PT
George P.,
That’s true, but as UBS notes within the report, it doesn’t seem reasonable to chalk up the single-month page view decrease entirely to the ongoing rollout of Ajax. Can you think of some big Ajax deployment that could have caused the drop?
Liz
3:55 PM PT
Liz,
I think it could be reasonable that the single-month page view decrease is due to the Ajax deployment in Yahoo Mail. According to Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.yahoo.com), (and you can take this info with a grain of salt), 50% of the traffic on Yahoo goes to Yahoo Mail. Now, even if that number is not totally correct, it’s significant enough that the Ajax deployment in Yahoo Mail would have caused a significant drop in Yahoo page views.
5:31 PM PT
Least you could do is cite Red Herring for the media outlet that reported this story first.
6:15 PM PT
It’s not hard to beleive. MySpace has been on an steady incline since its inception. My kids spend hours on it, while I go on Yahoo for just a few page hits a day.
9:59 PM PT
The Hitwise report was comparing Yahoo! Mail vs. MySpace, while ComScore tracks pageviews for a certain domain name, so *.yahoo.com vs *.myspace.com.
Whoever comes up with non-AJAXified TV listings will get the lead next month.
3:22 PM PT
Perhaps it’s a moot point regarding precise metrics. If you believe the trend, then does it matter if MySpace passes Yahoo! this month or next? Isn’t the timing less important than the fact that it’s even anticipated. I admit, as little as a year ago, I would have seriously questioned predictions of the ‘actual speed’ at which the MySpace community phenomenon has already accelerated.
4:31 AM PT
My first reaction to this was thinking “Good. Let MySpace suck up the perverts and the kiddie-crowd and leave Yahoo! to the grown-ups.”
Then I realized just how disturbing that thought is, and not just for the obvious reaons.
I like to think of myself as a Yahoo! enthusiast. I think they really have nailed the “Social Web” at a conceptual level, but their execution - to date anyway - leaves a lot to be desired.
I hope they can turn it around. MySpace targets a key demographic that is growing rapidly and has more and more [access to mommy-and-daddy's] disposable income. If NewsCorp can lock-in the loyalty of this audience to their brand, Yahoo! could be in real trouble in a few years as MySpace becomes a de facto portal for NewCorp content and the “tweens” and teens grow-up and start earning their own incomes.
A whole generation raised on Fox News. Now that’s a disturbing thought!
2:54 PM PT
I take the wait and see approach. I think it’s too early to make a call on Yahoo’s relevance in relation to MySpace or other sites based on such limited data.
Also, the 5 percent decrease in average minutes spent per day per user could just be because the AJAX portion of the site is more efficient.
Bottom line is that we need more data over a longer period of time before we jump to any conclusions.
The Hoff
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