Who Deserves Credit For Yahoo!’s Surge?

Yahoo! Beats Google for Most Visitors for July 2013

Plenty of noise about Yahoo!’s visitor count surpassing Google’s—~4.3 million—for the month of July 2013. There is also a lot of talk about Marissa Mayer’s leadership as a reason for this success. Is she the reason? Does she deserve the credit?

Looking at ComScore’s numbers since March, the gap has been closing between the two before a large drop by Yahoo! in June followed by the surge in July numbers. Google’s count continued a consistent drop during this time.

What happened in June and July? Yahoo! launched its redesigned US website along with a new logo. Would users really abandon and return to Yahoo! to test a new design or see a new logo? Were the changes so impressive it cause a social media ripple calling for others to give it a go? I don’t remember one…

However, there was another event I feel deserves a little consideration, the Snowden factor. Google was one of many BIG digital entities involved in the Prism program and it’s taking a lot of heat from it. However, Google’s visitor count is only down 1.3 million since May. While Yahoo! went from 193.5M in May down to 188.7M in June before jumping up to 196.7M in July. WOW, what a move by Yahoo!

Of coarse it is a combination of factors but for now I am happy to give credit to Ms. Mayer while we await August’s numbers.