Despite the rise of online properties such as Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), Pinterest and BuzzFeed, the sites that dominate the list of those most visited by Americans are the portals and search site Google.
According to comScore, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) sites were the most visited in February, with unique desktop users at 187 million, out of a total universe of 222 million U.S. Internet users. Google’s strength, which includes the traffic from YouTube, is a major reason it is among the most profitable public corporations in America. Google is the third most valuable company based on market capitalization.
Second on the list is Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sites, which had 183 million unique visitors last month. The company has continued to battle a drop in display advertising, which has happened across the industry. Yahoo! is fortunate to own a portion of one of the most valuable Internet companies in the world — China’s Alibaba. This has not taken the focus away from Yahoo!’s need to increase sales in its traditional business.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) sites are third on the list. The world’s largest software company owns web portal MSN, which has suffered from the same erosion in display advertising that Yahoo! has.
Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is the only Web 2.0 company to make the six, with unique visitors of 134 million. Facebook has more than 1.1 billion members around the world. Investors continue to ask whether Facebook can turn those members into billions of dollars in revenue. In the meantime, Facebook has decided to enlarge the company through M&A. It recently spent $2 billion to buy virtual reality company Oculus VR. Facebook also bought messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion.
AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) sits fifth on the list with 110 million unique visitors, which include traffic to the Huffington Post. AOL falls into the same category as Yahoo! and MSN. Despite its huge audience, the drop in display advertising has made growth difficult. However, its stock has more than tripled from lows it set just over two years ago.
Finally, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), by far the most successful e-commerce company in America, takes sixth place with unique visitors of 99 million. CEO Jeff Bezos has turned this traffic into a platform for sales of tens of thousands of items that used to be sold in brick-and-mortar stores. He has added to them with Amazon tablet and e-readers, as well as a growing streaming media business.
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