Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) was passed by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in terms of unique visitors in November. Google had 475.7 million visitors compared to 475.3 for Yahoo! All of Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ:MSFT) sites stayed in first place with 501.7 million according to ComScore and Bloomberg. However, Google grew faster than the other two companies.

But Yahoo!, currently viewed as the loser in the Internet derby, may actually be gaining a valuation advantage. Users are at least one fairly good metric of value. It's certainly been used in TV, radio, magazines and newspaper. Cable systems are often valued at dollars per subscriber.

If there is any logic to unique visitors having a discrete value, then either Google is overvalued or Yahoo! is undervalued. Google's market value is $140 billion. Yahoo!'s is $35 billion. And yet each has about the same number of unique visitors.

The two companies obviously have different growth rates and expense bases. The Google model is clearly preferred by Wall Street -- but perhaps by too large a margin.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall Street.

According to figures released recently by ComScore, audience growth at Google Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG) and Fox Interactive (which includes MySpace) was well ahead of other major web properties.

Overall Internet unique visitors grew 2% in September 2006 compared to the same month a year earlier hitting 173.4 million in the US.

The Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) sites were still the largest property, but that may not last much longer. Yahoo! sites grew 5% to 129.7 million unique users. Right behind was the Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) network of sites which includes AOL. TWX sites grew just 1% to 120.3 million. In third place was the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) network, which includes MSN. They were up 4% over last September to 119.4 million.

Google has impressive growth of 23% year-over-year to 107.4 million. It will pick up over 20 million new unique visitors with YouTube. EBay was next, but well behind Google, with 79 million unique visitors, up 13%.

Fox/MySpace grew by far the most of any of the other major network properties, rising 342%, with MySpace as the primary engine, to 70.9 million unique users.

If the current trend continues, Google may be in first place within a few months. Fox could quite easily top the 100 million unique visitor threshold. And, Microsoft and Time Warner will battle for third place.

It is a case where the traffic race may go to the swiftest.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.