Yahoo! (not MySpace) is still Web traffic leader by most measures

Yesterday, reports came out late in the afternoon that Hitwise, Internet traffic measurement firm, has placed MySpace.com, the social networking web site, as the number one American web site, accounting for 4.46% of all U.S. Internet visits for the previous week. This pushed Yahoo! e-mail, the most visited U.S. web site down the list.

However, looking at Yahoo's top three gateways, which includeto Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo home page and Yahoo search, they combine to over 10% of the U.S. market. MySpace's home page and e-mail site only amounted to 7.3% of U.S. Web market.

Then, when you look at unique visitors, Yahoo claims (Hitwise does not provide unique visitors statistics) that it accounts for 74% of the U.S. online market, while MySpace accounts for 30%. Another important measure to advertisers is amount or time spent. Again, according to Yahoo, it accounts for 13% of user time while MySpace only accounts for 3.2%.

Most importantly though is the global picture. There the situation is much different. ComScore Networks (Hitwise rival), projects that Yahoo attracts more than 500 million unique monthly visitors on a global basis, making Yahoo the most visited Internet network. MySpace is looking to expand internationally.

Within its niche, MySpace indeed dominates social networking, with and 80% share. But when you take a closer look at available traffic numbers, Yahoo is still king of the Web.