Hitwise: Google Maps Making Strides on MapQuest

Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews reviews Hitwise’s latest stats on the MapQuest vs. Google Maps battle. In short, Google Maps is catching up, if slowly. One stat:

“This [Google Maps up 7%] throttled down MapQuest’s lead over Google Maps significantly, falling from 429 percent more visits a year ago to just 126 percent more visits.

Still, MapQuest has more than 50% of mapping hits to Google’s 22% and Yahoo’s 13% (and dropping).

Heather Hopkins VP at Hitwise offers that “Google’s aggressive promotion of Google Maps – search result embeds and sponsored search results have helped drive the spike in traffic.” I’d tend to agree if only because there’s suprising little “coverage” of Google Maps in the press. Google Earth? Yes. Google Maps? Not so much as shown by mailing daily explorations.