Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Well, Hulu may be showing full length episodes, but YouTube is still king when it comes to viewership. (Yes, I just made that word up, copyright pending.)

Yesterday comScore reported that internet viewers watched 12 billion videos online in May 2008. That’s up 45% from last year! Google laid claim to a full quarter of the traffic, with 4.2 billion, of which YouTube accounted for $4.1 billion.

Hulu (NBC / FOX) made a bit of a dent, however – YouTube did slump a little in the polls and Hulu took up the slack, which amounted to nice if tiny slice of the market share. Microsoft and Yahoo! Sites account for most of the rest of the pie.

Nonetheless, when it comes to Google Video, the giant is towered over by its own progeny. YouTube is still the most popular way to search for videos, outstripping MySpace and Hulu still – although that may not be so for much longer.

YouTube had 12.6 million unique visitors in May, compared with Google Video (7 M) and Yahoo Video ( 4.2M) The sharp spike from April made YouTube the fifth most gaining property on the web.

Some have gone to say YouTube is more influential now than even MTV, but considering that the average length of a video online is around a minute and a half, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same demographic here.

YouTube is a hotbed at the moment, due to Viacom’s lawsuit against Google over copyright infringement. Google was ordered to hand over user logs, causing a flurry of concern about privacy issues.

Viacom backed down a hair and agreed that substitutions of an anonymous code were acceptable to shield user identity in the material handed over. Viacom had filed the $1 billion suit claiming that over 1.5 billion views of video clips on YouTube were of some 160,000 pieces of unauthorized material.

Guess some of that MTV material is popular on YouTube too! Along with SpongeBob and stuff off of Comedy Central. Viacom is out for blood, and we shall have to see who pays the ultimate price; Google, YouTube or the users themselves.

In the meantime YouTube users can now combine add local search options to their viewing experience, leading to a rise in ‘prank videos, but really opening up the market for instructional videos from local stores, particularly in the sports and hobby field.