We’re used to seeing Google in the top list of websites for pure usage just about every day of the year, at least in American and the UK. But while our own English sights were kept firmly planted on Google over this Christmas period, the Americans strayed on Christmas Day when Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site, as millions of Americans wished their friends a happy Christmas and talked about their experiences.
Facebook faced a fair amount of controversy and negative media coverage in 2009 due its continuing battle with privacy campaigners, but the site has remained incredibly popular all year round. It reached the number one search listings in both America and the UK and despite not having quite as many users as rival social networking site MySpace, it’s catching up quickly.
It may have only been for a single day, but the event shows how massively popular social networking has become and how vital keeping up to date with social networking and courting the phenomena for viral and marketing purposes when appropriate really is. With figures from September last year showing Facebook accounting for one in seven page views in the UK, it’s no surprise its starting to challenge Google’s supremacy.
Another important thing to remember about Facebook statistics is that while Google normally leads in terms of pure hits, people spend much more time on Facebook than Google, on average. As a search engine, Google is most often seen as a stepping stone or tool to reach other sites, while Facebook users have been known to spend hours on the site chatting, socialising and playing a vast array of games and applications.
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