Online porn sites get about three times more visits than the top Web search engines, including market leader Google Inc., according to a research firm.
Visits to the top three Web search engines -- which virtually dominate their sector -- accounted for 5.5 percent of all Internet visits by U.S. users during the week ending May 29, said Hitwise Inc., a California-based company that tracks such activity.
During that time, Google garnered 2.7 percent of all Web visits while Yahoo Search and MSN Search received 1.7 percent and 1.1 percent respectively, Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise, told Reuters.
Google, which has become so popular that its name is synonymous with search, is moving toward an initial public offering that is expected to be a blockbuster.
The three leading search providers fall into a subcategory Hitwise calls “Search Engines and Directories,” which covers 1,944 Web search and directory sites. The subcategory, which accounted for 13.8 percent of all Internet visits, also includes AskJeeves.com, Yahoo.com and Microsoft’s MSN.com.
“Search Engines and Directories,” along with the “Email Services,” “Net Communities and Chat,” “Software” and other subcategories, make up Hitwise’s “Computers and Internet” category that pulled in almost one-third of all visits.
Other large Hitwise categories include “Adult” at 18.8 percent, “Entertainment” at 8.0 percent, “Business and Finance” at 7.4 percent and “Shopping and Classifieds” at 7 percent.
In a separate report published late last month, Hitwise said that between August and April, Google remained the most visited search site and was alone among the three sector players in gaining market share within its subcategory.
Hitwise also found that fast-growing comparison shopping sites such as Shopping.com, NexTag and Bizrate are getting fewer referrals from Web search providers -- meaning that users are either going directly to the niche sites or finding other routes to them, thereby cutting search engines out of lucrative shopping clicks.
The same appears to be true for top travel sites, Tancer said.