The famous Microsoft tagline from 1996 is a very big question for many big websites. What do you visit on Google, Yahoo and MSN? The most visited page for Google is, of course, Google homepage. But things aren't the same for Yahoo. Most users visit Yahoo just to check their mail. That's why Yahoo disabled POP3 access on Yahoo Mail. MSN's situations looks even more dramatic: 3 from 4 visitors go to Hotmail.google.com - 75%
images.google.com - 9%
mail.google.com - 7%
groups.google.com - 2%
video.google.com - 2%
news.google.com - 1%
froogle.google.com - 1%
yahoo
mail.yahoo.com - 53%
search.yahoo.com - 9%
news.yahoo.com - 3%
login.yahoo.com - 3%
bid.yahoo.com - 2%
yahoo.com - 2%
finance.yahoo.com - 2%
msn
hotmail.msn.com - 73%
search.msn.com - 8%
spaces.msn.com - 5%
msn.com - 3%
msnbc.msn.com - 2%
moneycentral.msn.com - 1%
arabia.msn.com - 1%
*The data is provided by alexa.com and it's not statistically accurate.
Yahoo was my favorite portal on the web until they pulled pop3 access from Yahoo Mail (formerly Rocketmail). I no longer check Yahoo Mail on a regular basis. Net result: my eyeballs spend even less time trained on Yahoo ads.
ReplyDeleteYou made a good decision. They should give users the freedom to choose how they want to read their mails. Like Google does with Gmail.
ReplyDeleteUsers want useful information on a homepage, not mostly news and all that other stuff they have on those home pages. If they would simply learn to do something like that, then users would visit their site to do more than check e-mail. I check my yahoo because I've had it for so long and every blue moon, I'll get someone who writes that still has it. Otherwise, though it's a decent product, it still peeves me that I'm held hostage as to how I obtain my e-mail. I do it out of obligation. One day I am going to probably forget about it, especially since some of their tech support is very incompetent. One of my yahoo accounts was jacked and I forgot my permanent e-mail, but all that data can be compromised anyway, thus, I did not get my e-mail address restored by them because they would not provide alternative verification, such as prior information entered before the hack.
ReplyDelete