14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is threatened by numerous online video sharing services but none of them managed to steal an important part of users targeted by Google's product. According to Hitwise, YouTube recorded 50 percent more traffic than all the video sharing services on the Internet. The research company said that YouTube's traffic was increased a little bit slower than the same period of the last year but it grew up with approximately 70 percent in 5 months.
"YouTube's growth has not begun to slow yet this year. Hitwise traffic data shows that the market share of US visits to YouTube has increased by 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007 (this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos). In comparison, the market share of visits to a custom category of 64 other video sites increased by only 8% in that period. As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined," LeeAnn Prescott from Hitwise said today.
Since Google acquired YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion, the online video sharing service grew up a lot and attracted a considerable number of visitors. According to the same company 20 percent of the traffic came from the search engines and, since the parent firm of YouTube is Google, the owner of the best search technology, it's quite obvious to record a huge traffic for the video product.
"Search engines are responsible for about 20% of traffic to video sites, including YouTube. Users are increasingly finding links to video pages in search engine results - and going to them. For the four weeks ending June 24, 2006 Hitwise captured 23,696 search terms sending traffic to the custom cateogry of 65 video sites," the Hitwise official said.
It's obvious that YouTube is the leader of its category and it will be extremely difficult to steal its number one place as long as there is no other solution able to lure the visitors.