Well its official, Google’s group of sites are now the world’s most visited places on the net.  Google has had a 13% increase in March, overtaking Microsoft and Yahoo!  Microsoft Corp. received a 4% rise while Yahoo Inc. only saw a 1% increase.

The significant jump in Google’s visitors could be attributed to their rollout of sites such as YouTube.com, Gmail, and the corporation’s online calendar and online payment systems, even though these sites are still nowhere near as popular as Google’s search engine itself.

Google still dominates the search engine market share with huge 48% of all US based enquiries.  Google’s group of sites received 528 million visitors in March worldwide, Microsoft close behind with 527 million visitors and Yahoo still lagging behind its major competitor with only 476.3 million visitors.

Another site to look out for is the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia which received a huge jump in its visitors to 212.2 million, an 82% increase.   

So the search engine giant continues its rein.  And I’m sure has the others scrambling around to find ways of increasing their own market share, and trying to gain back their visitors.  Danny Sullivan, who tracks the search industry, says that the giants growth may start to slow if the company gets too big, not being able to keep up with the smaller and nimbler rivals. 

Whichever way you look at it, it’s an exciting time in the search engine industry, and there is definitely a shift in long time trends. 

The question is “How are the other conglomerates going to respond?”