Enjoying phenomenal growth over the last year, social networking site Facebook has now overtaken Google’s homepage as the Internet’s most visited site.
This event signals what many have been saying for awhile – the Internet is becoming more sociable than searchable. Facebook and Google combines accounted for 14% of all Internet visits last week according to online marketing research firm Hitwise.
A year ago, Facebook accounted for 2% of all Internet visits but as of last week, accounted for 7.07%. Google accounted for 7.03% of Internet visits. In addition to visits, Facebook membership has grown tremendously as well, surpassing 200 million subscribers last April, doubling that to 400 million in just under a year.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.
Hitwise’s data only counted visits to Google’s homepage, not its other properties like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube and its new social networking site Buzz. Developed as a response to Facebook, subscribers can logon to share videos, feeds and other items from their other social networking accounts.
Take all of Google’s sites into consideration and they account for 11.03% of Internet visits last week.
Facebook’s trajectory as seen on the graph indicates that it will soar past Google in the next few months. Social networking sites come and go though, as seen by MySpace’s decline in the last couple of years. But last December, users spent an average of 5.5 hours per month on social networking sites, an 82% increase over the year before according to the Nielsen research firm.
Data like this confirms the importance of adopting social media into your overall online marketing strategy. Building a good Facebook profile and exploring other outlets that can benefit your business is no longer a taboo thing, it’s definitely entered mainstream thought in the online marketing world.