Facebook Plunges Again
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Facebook now the most-visited website in the world
You hear that, Mr Google? That is the sound of inevitability. Hitwise has just released two sets of data for 2010: the top 10 most-searched terms, and the top 10 most-visited websites. Rather unsurprisingly, Facebook is at the top of both charts. It leads the most-visited chart by some way, too: almost 9% of all Internet visits in the U.S. were to Facebook, while Google only accounted for 7.2%.
These stats are made all the more insane when you compare them to Hitwise's 2009 figures. In 2009, Facebook only accounted for 4.3% of Internet visits -- it has more than doubled in size and activity. Google, on the other hand, with 6.7% in 2009 has shown a small amount of growth. Yahoo's homepage has stayed the same in 2010, at 3.3%, but Yahoo Mail has slumped significantly from 4.4 to 3.5%, but still ranks as the third-most visited site in 2010.
Facebook is still some way off Microsoft and Google when you factor in all of their properties (Hotmail, Bing, MSN, YouTube), but as a single website, Facebook is now by far the most visited in the world.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsAshutosh MishraDec 30th 2010 1:07PM
The screenshot says "Data is based on U.S. visits...". ???
Sebastian AnthonyDec 30th 2010 1:12PM
@Ashutosh Mishra Yes -- but Facebook is even larger outside the US, where Yahoo isn't as popular.
(Check the last link, it shows you how many visitors each site gets on a global scale.)
aimsharvathDec 30th 2010 3:36PM
... And it would seem as though a good portion of Google and Yahoo visitors are people who don't understand web browsers well enough to get directly to Facebook. This news makes me sad.
Does anyone know what constitutes an individual visit? I wonder whether there's a specific time interval between visits or if you're the same visitor until your IP lease is renewed. I know several people who have set their home page to Facebook. I hope that's artificially boosting their rank... Hey, it's working for MSN.com!
Sebastian AnthonyDec 30th 2010 7:09PM
@aimsharvath I doubt it's as complex as that -- a visit is probably just a visit, irrespective of the amount of pages they actually visit on the site, or how long they stay (but if you poke around on the Hitwise site, it should say how they collect the data!)
Good point, re: people searching for 'facebook' and 'facebook login' -- that must be a significant amount of traffic :)
DrakkenfyreDec 30th 2010 8:29PM
I have seen people use Yahoo to find Google.
I sort of think browsers need a pop-up, when you type in "Google", "Facebook", or "Yahoo" (amongst a few popular search terms), that says "Did you know you can type www.google.com into the address bar, and go straight there?"