Alert - HitWise says GOOGLE Has Been Dethroned As Top US Site

[Brett_Tabke]

WallStreetJournal is reporting that Hitwise has released back channel docs saying their service shows Facebook passing Google last month.

[nasdaq.com...]

Facebook Inc. edged past Google Inc. (GOOG) to become the most visited U.S. Web site for the week ended March 13, the first time the Internet giant has been topped since 2007, according to Hitwise.

The data provider said the privately held social-networking site's share was 7.07% for the week, compared with Google's 7.03%. The market share of visits to Facebook nearly tripled from a year earlier for the week, while visits to Google grew 9%.

The last time Google fell to No. 2 for a full week was in September 2007, when it fell behind Myspace, another social-networking site. Myspace is a unit of News Corp. (NWS), which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newswire.

[Nobias]

Gotta love Facebook :)

[J_RaD]

uh oh, google is now releasing buzz 2, this time they are going to enable in adwords, google docs, and in their chrome browser to gain even MORE market share.

ahh sit back and watch the knee jerks

[claus]

Isn't it the case that users from all over the world are connecting through "facebook.com" ?

If that is right a very large portion of the traffic isn't from the USA.

So, they may be comparing apples and oranges.

[WesleyC]

Also, are they taking into account AJAX requests as "hits"? Facebook chat makes an enormous number of AJAX requests, even if your browser is simply sitting there doing nothing. Google (especially iGoogle homepages) make a few, but with a much smaller frequency. Counting hits seems to me to be a very error-prone concept when it comes to ranking traffic of two sites of this size.

[JS_Harris]

It's all about staying power, Google's got it. I think we'll see a more popular social site come along long before a new player emerges to seriously challenge Google/Bing/Yahoo in search.

[StoutFiles]

Is this just Facebook.com vs. Google.com? What about Gmail, YouTube, etc.? I think WSJ is just fishing for a story. It's also worth noting how the last "#1", besides Google, was Myspace...and look how far they've fallen in such a short time.

[pawas]

This is supposed to happen, as me and all of my friends and relatives open facebook every time we sit in front of PC.

@JS_Harris, Yahoo huh? I heard they sold out ?

[graeme_p]

It looks like the number of visits (not hits, not uniques) to the site, by people in the US ony. so it is a fair comparison.

This snippet from the press release is also interesting:

Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

and

isits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Isn't it the case that users from all over the
> world are connecting through "facebook.com" ?

That is my understanding. Do the Google numbers take into account there 200+ tlds as well? google.co.uk...etc. What about Gmail and GDocs?

> AJAX requests

That is where it gets tricky counting numbers. Look at Twitter with all its client usage. Those numbers don't compare to pure page views.

[LostOne]

You can count me as one, but it's that silly Farmville game is the only reason I go there. My crops are now dying:

[engine]

From our earlier story...
Report:Facebook Driving More Online Users To Major Portals Than Google [webmasterworld.com]

[drall]

Like I said in another thread, all of my teenage kids use facebook hourly, daily..... All of the highschool friends do likewise. Most of them are using Bing as well due to it's image search and name which sounds more hip.

I think Facebook is a totally different threat to Google and it is wrong to classify it in the same league as Myspace. I never had CCIE's submit resumes to me with a link in the sig to their myspace page but almost everyone has a link to their facebook page.

[Pass the Dutchie]

As of last week Firefox is now my visitor's browser of choice. How the web turns.

[J_RaD]

it will be intersting to see how goog reacts when the web traffic is goog 50%/50% bing, Y, ask.

[Pass the Dutchie]

I think Facebook is a totally different threat to Google

Facebook has much more to fear from Google than Google does of Facebook. Facebook is the master of networking and Google is the master of all information. Google is more likely to succeed in networking than Facebook is to take on search.

[Pass the Dutchie]

@J_RaD

didn't you mean Ask Y Bing ; )

[drall]

Who said Facebook wants to take on search? You are thinking one dimensionally. The threat comes from marketshare, as Facebooks marketshare continues to grow who it uses as a default search provider is/will become the threat to Google.

[kaz]

it is a fair comparison

So is revenue/profits.

[BillyS]

You mean:

Y Ask Bing?

How much money did Facebook make last year? Are we betting they turn the corner and start making billions?

[JS_Harris]

I don't care about your farm, your cafe, your aquarium or your mafia. What % of pageviews being credited to facebook are actually from these games?

[StoutFiles]

What % of pageviews being credited to facebook are actually from these games?

Better yet, what % of these hits are consumers that will turn a profit? People using Google are looking for something and will likely click ads. People on Facebook aren't going anywhere, just hogging bandwidth.

[J_RaD]

Facebook has much more to fear from Google than Google does of Facebook

all you have to do is take the traffic away from google and they are the master of nothing, MS, Y!, apple, ATT, know this thats is why they are taking search traffic away from them.

its not cutting them off at the knees, its going straight for the throat, traffic = $$ and control. The more search % you take away from google they less money they have each month to play with

[kaz]

I don't see facebook taking away search marketshare from google/search. If they were, the dollars should easily be following and they are not. I see facebook taking away marketshare from email, though.

[mcneely]

@drall

Who said Facebook wants to take on search? You are thinking one dimensionally. The threat comes from marketshare, as Facebooks marketshare continues to grow who it uses as a default search provider is/will become the threat to Google.

Exactly, and at last glance, Bing was the primary search entity for Facebook

[BillyS]

>>Exactly, and at last glance, Bing was the primary search entity for Facebook

And that's helped Bing how?

[mcneely]

@JS_Harris

I don't care about your farm, your cafe, your aquarium or your mafia. What % of pageviews being credited to facebook are actually from these games?

True ...

But how many people play with all of Google's little toys? .. You'll have to admit that Google more than has it's share of gizmo's and gadgets that have nothing at all to do with search .. chances are quite good in fact, that most of Google's traffic isn't typing in a single search term ...

I wonder ... just how much money those game apps over on Facebook are making, via the ads that exist in them, over there being "no" ads on most of Google's time wasting toys ..

It's not about the search, more than it's going to be about who can waste who's time the most with all of those nonsense little 3rd party apps and toys that have seemingly taken over the social networks.

[J_RaD]

bing gets added exposure, and when you search facebook you are returned with facebook results, THEN results from the web.

[Pass the Dutchie]

I just don’t see Facebook trouncing Google by becoming the middle man. People who want to search on the web will 'Google it'. They won’t go to Facebook to specifically search the web. And besides, those on Facebook are more likely to search for people on Facebook than they are a new plant pot!

Facebook seems to be allowing the average Joe to make a buck off click thoughts from sponsored ads they place on their Facebook page (Facesense?!?) Click throughs could be cashed in or exchanged for farm credits! Facebook is at the end of the day a mass of micro-social-sites. Apples and pears.