One Billion, A one with nine zeros: 1000000000. That is a huge number. And that number is now connected to Google. Not because they make that cash (they make more than that), but because it is the number of unique visitors to their websites. A month.
The numbers are astonishing and come from Comscore who released the numbers this Tuesday. Comscore says it is the first time ever that a Internet company hits these kind of numbers.
The numbers mean that Google is leading the pack before Microsoft (905 million unique visitors in May), Facebook (714 million visitors) and Yahoo (689 million visitors).
The numbers are high but have to be seen in perspective. Google saw a rise of 8.4% over the past year, and is the biggest. But looking at that growth number we see that both Facebook and Microsoft saw a bigger growth, percentage wise: 30% and 15%. But remember that 8.7% of a billion still is a lot more than 30% of 714 million.
Can we trust these numbers? Well, you always have to be careful off course because it is very difficult to actually get the right numbers. Just use two different analytics tools on your website and you will find differences there. The numbers from Comscore are based on their “global measurement panel”, which monitors two million Internet users. So can we trust it? Yes, but we have to look further than just the estimate.