Search Engine Optimization

Forthcoming January traffic data will reportedly show that Google Maps has taken the lead from MapQuest as the top mapping site in the US. According to the numbers that I received (I’ve asked comScore to verify), MapQuest’s January monthly unique visitors were 41.5 million and Google’s were 42.2 million. – Search Engine Land

This is the first time Google overtaken MapQuest, something search community predicted for a while. I personally believe that the trend will continue, with Google becoming the dominant player, slowly but surely eating away at MapQuest market share.

Local Battle

Local search goes hand in hand with Maps and Google is winning this battle over all competitors, including Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft.

Google has very distinct advantage over all competitors:

• it promotes Maps on its own search results and sends a large bulk of map traffic trough search
• it has richest feature set, such as Streetview and walking/transit directions

Though Microsoft invested as much money as Google did on Local, Big G is the leader primarily due to its market share, self promotion on search result and some offline advertising.

MapQest is placing all bets into user loyalty – bad strategy if you ask me. Sure, there’s a large number of users who are accustomed to the brand, but there are people who will trade up if it’s more efficient, and Google is currently more efficient than MapQuest.

Expect ComScore to report another dip in MapQuest market share.

in 2007 Google removed map links from search results to competing websites such as Map Quest, Yahoo Maps and Maps.