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3.1.2011 Facebook overtakes Google in US

Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular website in America, figures from Experian Hitwise show. The research firm reported that Facebook received 8.9% of all online visits in the US between January and November 2010. Google fell to second on 7.2%, followed by Yahoo Mail on 3.5%, Yahoo's main portal on 3.3% and YouTube on 2.7%. At the parent company level, Google's portfolio – including Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps – took 9.6% of visits, helping it stay in front of Facebook on this metric. More broadly, the ten leading individual web properties – also housing MSN, MySpace, Windows Live Mail and Bing – accounted for 33% of activity during the opening 11 months of last year, up 12% on 2009.

Facebook climbed from third in the 2009 rankings and ninth in 2008, and enjoys a particularly impressive dwell time among members, Experian Hitwise suggested. Indeed, the Palo Alto-based platform delivered approximately 25% of page views in November 2010. Based on analysis of the top 1,000 search terms entered across America in 2010, Experian Hitwise also stated that Facebook led the charts on this measure, boasting a 2.1% share.

B.L. 3.1.2011