The Next Web

Live.com: bigger than Google in September 2008

By Boris
February 19, 2008
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Could it be? Could Live.com become a bigger web destination than Google.com? If you look at Alexa (Reach: Percentage of Internet users who visit Google and Live.com) it certainly seems so. Just recently Google had to give up its second place on the top 10 list of websites to Youtube but now it has been surpassed in rank even by Live.com and is currently number 4 on the list. As you can see I used a very unscientific method to predict the daily reach for both Google.com and Live.com and Live is clearly on the rise.

Live.com: bigger than Google in September 2008

Not all data on Compete shows Live.com as the winner but this one (pages per visit) certainly does:

Google VS Live.com on Compete

I know these numbers are debatable and are more indications of web traffic and usage but even so, this would have been unthinkable in November 2005 when Live.com launched. Google has long been considered the only viable search destination. My guess is that in 2008 more and more people will start considering alternatives such as Live.com, Yahoo.com and maybe even new players like ManagedQ which we profiled here earlier.


  • I don't know if I'm surprised. First of all Google.com is not a destination site as such. It's a place you go to be able to venture on to what you're really looking for. As far as I recall, search or searchrelated stuff still accounts for more than 80 % of their traffic.

    Live.com also takes under it's umbrella Hotmail and other huge properties, where people spend time, look at pages etc. etc. These are areas where Microsoft is still bigger than Google, so if you factor these things in, it shouldn't be that surprising.

    Having said that it's interesting though considering the way Google is being perceived as the all-dominant player in everything - the definor of things. And of course their ability to monetize. But that's a completely different story IMHO.
  • Axl
    I find this hard to believe. I'm running many sites, targeting all kinds of people and the difference in referrals between live.com and google.com is very significant. I couldn't claim to have perfect SEO for both engines across all sites (and I likely don't), but even without it I can see a quite clear pattern and live.com is nowhere near google.com. I think a lot of the data in that graph is traffic that didn't really include a "search query" but happened to go through assets that Microsoft control. I could be wrong though, and if so good work M$!
  • James
    I completely agree with you Boris. I checked out ManagedQ and I was really shocked by the fact that it had real technology. The biggest problem with search is there has been essentially no successful innovation in almost ten years. I welcome the efforts of small guys like ManagedQ to invite change in this stagnant market.

    Everyone should try ManagedQ for a week.

    Try it out for a week here.
  • Derek
    I've also checked out ManagedQ, which is a new search application startup. They layer natural language processing and a pretty awesome UI over Google results. This is definitely the right route to take in terms of taking search to the next level. Most other startups try to rebuild the search engine, which is fruitless. I've found them to be more effective than Google for finding what I want. It's nice to see some new technology in search.
  • Your unscientific method seems to be favoring google more, since you have taken the most recent upward turn as the place to start your line from. Anyway James/Derek, you dudes are a bit transparent since nobody talked about ManateQ before you two!
  • @Mads valid points! Except that Gmail is also part of the google.com domains as far as Alexa is concerned...

    @Mark yeah, I decided to not be TOO hard on Google in my method. If you use the same starting point it looks very different...
  • This is a very interesting article. However, the problem is that Live has only one search engine for all over the world, and google have at least 20. Individual search engines that act as their own entities.
  • Let's see where your lines match up using a logarithmic chart.
  • Laurent
    Live Search usage is nowhere near Google. The traffic details reveal much more.

    Where people go on Live.com:
    mail.live.com 78%
    login.live.com 14%
    spaces.live.com 5%
    search.live.com 1%

    Where people go on Google.com:
    google.com 60%
    mail.google.com 14%
    images.google.com 9%

    In addition Google also has a lot of localized search engines. Just scroll down the list and see at least 20 Google domains in the top 100.
  • i agree with laurent. live search is nowhere near google... pfiuf... that's a release :D when i saw the title post i freaked out... i like google... google is all you can get best from all internet
  • I like ManagedQ, however, trying to uninstall it from Safari on a Mac proves to difficult. I"m still waiting for support to tell me how to do it.
  • For anyone that cares. I did heard from ManagedQ support. I was able to uninstall with ease. They were professional, prompt and efficient.

    I suggest you give it a try.
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