• by Masha Geller , July 4, 2002

Things seem to be going very well for Google. The popular search site gained nearly four million unique audience members in May, more than any other property in the global top 25, according to the Nielsen//NetRatings Global Internet Index.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that the growth in Google's unique audience caps off a year of steady growth in which Google also became the only new entry into the top five European properties since Nielsen//NetRatings started measuring European Internet audiences in early 2000.

"Google's pan-European success is unmatched by any other regional properties," said Richard Goosey, international chief of measurement science at NetRatings. "The idea of specialist search sites remains a powerful one. Google's site design is one of the simplest on the Web, placing the emphasis on the speed and power of Google's search technology. By comparison, many big portals offer a potpourri of varied services, believing that surfers prefer the convenience of a group of online services as opposed to a dedicated search engine.

"The secret of Google's success is its brand management," Goosey said. "In 2001 the property extended its sub-sites with directories and archives that fit well into its search specialty. This shows Google both following in the footsteps of the big portals but also learning from them by extending only in its area of expertise and gaining large audience numbers as a result."

Goosey also noted that Google's success, based on doing one thing extremely well, may point to the future direction of the Web's most successful properties. "If a specialist in search capabilities - the backbone of Web services - can achieve such global prominence, specialists in other sectors may not be far behind," he said.