As if we need more proof of the tremendous power and reach of FACEBOOK, it was the most searched term on the internet in 2011 and occupied 4 of the top 10 positions plus Facebook.com was the most visited website in 2011.
Here is an excellent article on the subject written by Todd Wasserman
In another illustration of Facebook‘s top-of-mind status among web surfers, “Facebook” was the most-searched term of 2011, according to Experian Hitwise.
This was the third year in a row that Facebook topped the list. The company’s name accounted for 3.1% of all searches in 2011, a 46% jump over last year, the researcher reports. However, if you take into account four variations of Facebook — Facebook, Facebook.com, Facebook Login and www.facebook.com — the social networking giant’s share of the top 50 searches was 3.48%, an increase of 33%. The four terms also appeared in the top 10:
- 1. Facebook
- 2. YouTube
- 3. Facebook Login
- 4. Craigslist
- 5. Facebook.com
- 6. Yahoo
- 7. eBay
- 8. www.facebook.com
- 9. Mapquest
- 10. Yahoo.com
YouTube, meanwhile, accounted for 1.36% of searches, a 21% increase over last year. Searches for Yahoo were also up 15%.
In a statement from Hitwise, Simon Bradstock, general manager of the researcher, noted that single-word searches rose 11% as consumers got used to predictive search technologies like Google Autocomplete. Bradstock noted that searches for “face” and “you” cracked the top 50 as web surfers let Google and other search engines finish the terms “Facebook” and “YouTube.”
Looking at the most-visited websites, Hitwise gave Facebook more reason to celebrate as Facebook accounted for 10.29% of all website visits, a 15% increase from 2010. Google’s network of websites, excluding YouTube, drew 7.7% of all web visits, a 7% increase. However, if you include YouTube in Google’s ranking, Google bests Facebook with 11.98% of all visits, a 22% jump over last year.