Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week, according to new findings from Hitwise. .
The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.
Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.
Over the Christmas holidays Facebook.com reached the number one ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6 and 7, 2010. But these were just spikes.
Looking at the longer term trend in the graph below
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Hitwise’s findings show Facebook's meteoric rise is now on target to meet or beat Google.
If the social media site’s rise continues, as seems likely with its market share up 185% for the same period year-on-year, Facebook will soon become dominant over Google by a huge margin.
Some experts believe the pick up in Facebook users could be down to a recent revamp of the user landing page but it’s not completely clear.
“If you peep at Facebook's market share curve, it's not a smooth linear climb, and the gentle oscillations in increasing market share are more probably representative of slight changes in Facebook's popularity or appearance in broadcast media.,”says Fast Company’s Kit Eaton
“Besides, it seems that Facebook continues to attract more members, and sees those members interacting more with the site, pretty much no matter what it does to redesign its services.”
So is it the end of the road for Google? Of course not. It operates as a search engine and with new business streams being constantly developed, such as its own answer to Facebok with Google Buzz, its future is pretty much safe.
“What's really driving users to Facebook in droves is that it's a genuine phenomenon. Social networking is still riding that ‘oh you should try this, it's new and cool’ wave and the site itself has reached a critical mass of user numbers whereby if you want to contact almost anyone, odds are that they have a Facebook account,” adds Eaton.
The implications to marketers are clear.
Firstly, social media marketing now has to be a part of any brand strategy – no excuses! And it’s got to be done properly – not just setting up a Facebook page and forgetting about it. But actively monitoring and managing conversations, engaging with consumers.
Secondly, as Eaton points out, Facebook is now in a position to leverage it’s huge user visits to seize control of the online ad-placement business from Google.
“Advertisers will begin to do the math and work out which site will get their ads in front of more eyeballs,” he concludes.
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