Last year around this time, there were those who classified 2009 as “the year of Facebook”, the one in which the site had risen to the top of the most searched terms online, for example, and had begun to assert itself as the most used social network in several countries. Well, all of this is only relatively important compared to this year’s performance.
The unlikely happened and – at least in Experian Hitwise accounts – Facebook has overtaken giants like Google or Yahoo, both as the most visited site and in terms of the most searched terms online.
According to the market research firm, Facebook was, for the first time, the site with the highest number of visits in the US in 2010, surpassing Google and Yahoo’s email service, which occupied the top positions in 2009. In addition to the new title, also strengthened its position as the most searched term in search engines.
In this ranking, expressions related to the service are even responsible for 3.48 percent of all searches (among the 50 most referenced sites), which represents an increase of 207 percent compared to 2009.
In addition to the word “facebook”, the expressions “facebook login”, which rose from the ninth place on the table to the second, and “www.facebook.com” have also been included in the list of the ten most searched terms this year. The table also includes terms such as “youtube”, in the third position, “craiglist”, in fourth place, or “ebay”, in fifth.
In the analysis by the number of visitors, the study reveals that Facebook added, between January and November, 8.93 percent of accesses, while Google stood at 7.19 percent. Yahoo’s email went from second to third, with 3.30 percent of visits and YouTube comes in fourth with 2.65 percent.
Still, if you add visitors to the various sites of the search giant, Google remains the leader, with 9.85 percent of accesses on its own, against 8.93 percent of the social network. Yahoo accounts for 8.12 percent of visits.
Experian Hitwise also clarifies that the ten most visited sites are responsible for 33 percent of all websites accessed between January and November this year – a figure 12 percent higher than their “weight” in 2009.
