The rich get richer when it comes to YouTube and its market share of visits to entertainment sites tracked by Hitwise; thanks to Google including YouTube results in Google Video searches, that market share of visits jumped by 18.5 percent.

Google's impact on websites presents a daily concern for the prudent site publisher. Am I indexed appropriately? Can my site be optimized better? Will I get all the Google-driven traffic I possibly can so I can profit handsomely and crush my adversaries under my heels?



It's a tough world, online business. YouTube became a success story with a relatively simple approach to letting people share and embed video content. Then along came Google with a $1.65 billion deal to acquire YouTube's presence and all the traffic it receives.



There has been plenty of speculation on Google and its intentions for video advertising. Since they purchased the biggest video playground on the Internet in the form of YouTube, it makes sense for them to use it as a testing bed.



The challenge comes in trying to make a top site even more heavily trafficked than it is. Businesses at the top of industries have faced that issue for years. Coca-Cola is a good example. Despite leading the world beverage market for years, they continually try to come up with new flavors to keep their place. At the top, there is nowhere to go but down.



YouTube had an easier time of it judging by analyst Bill Tancer's report on the Hitwise site. YouTube needs a boost? No problem. Here comes the Google Effect:

On the Saturday prior to the Google Video index integration (January 20th) YouTube received .54% of all Internet visits in the U.S. , and 37.98% of all visits to the Entertainment - Multimedia category. For the Saturday following the integration (January 27th) YouTube's market share rose to .64% for all site visits in the U.S. a one week growth rate of 18.5%.



To what Degree was Google Video responsible for that 18.5% increase? On Wednesday January 24th, the day before the index integration went live, Google Video was responsible for .73% of all of YouTube's traffic, by Saturday Google Video was responsible for 8.68% of all of YouTube's upstream traffic (MySpace is still the #1 upstream provider of traffic to YouTube @ 17.54% of all traffic for that same day).

YouTube's co-founder Chad Hurley told World Economic Forum attendees that the site would debut a revenue-sharing model sometime this year. If they do, video creators will enjoy that extra traffic from Google's Video Search Index. Profit!



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Tag: YouTube



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