As GOOG climbs above $500 per share, as predicted to happen about this time last year before the great January plunge, questions as to just how high Google can get, in terms of stock, search share, and visits, get more intense. Last week, a Citigroup analyst predicted Google would overtake Yahoo in visits by the end of 2007. Hitwise disagrees.

While Google is the Wall Street darling, with stock projected to rise as high as $750 (some have timidly suggested as high as $840), and with a search market share somewhere between 40 and 60 percent, Hitwise's Bill Tancer says that not only will it take longer than a year, but much has to be assumed, lost, and gained to get Google past Yahoo and to the number one online property.

Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, based on numbers provided by comScore projected that Google would overcome a 20-million visitor deficit, supplanting Yahoo as the top spot, if current growth rates continued.

Tancer chewed that over using Hitwise numbers and came to a different conclusion. Though Yahoo's market share has dropped by 10 percent in the last year, and Google's has risen by 18.6 percent, Tancer estimates it will take three years for Google to catch up with Yahoo.

"If we apply those growth rates, and assume no material changes in those rates over the next three years (a big assumption), Google would not surpass Yahoo! in market share of visits until mid-2009," writes Tancer.

What will make Yahoo difficult to overcome is how the traffic is spread out among Yahoo properties. A third of Yahoo traffic goes to Yahoo Mail. Another third goes to Yahoo.com, and just under 11 percent are using Yahoo Search.

The traffic dispersed among the top 20 Yahoo properties is double the traffic dispersed among top 20 Google properties. At the top of Google's list is, of course, search, gathering 87 percent of Google traffic. The rest are spread out to the hundredths of a percent among all Google properties.

Tag: Google

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