Facebook becomes the most visited independent website of 2010‎

Google, the website that created history as the most visited and consulted website for its info and search efficiency, has finally met its match in the United States!

The year 2010 saw the change in fortunes as Facebook conquered Google.com’s top spot as the most coveted website in the United States for most of 2010.  That social network sites would emerge on top was an unexpected outcome. However Facebook garnered 8.9 percent of all U.S. visits during the period January to November 2010, indicating that social networking websites are here to stay. Google.com was pushed to the second place with about 7.2 percent of all visits. The online site measurement services were conducted by Experian Hitwise.

This is a pointer to Facebook’s immense popularity. In a short span of six years, Facebook has grown to become the world’s largest Web social network with almost half a billion patronizing the website worldwide. What is more, it could well also be the site where the users hang on for a while, in terms of duration of stay. This is going to be another parameter that has a potential to be studied merely to rate the popularity of a site and to draw other inferences.

Google.com was the most visited website in the US in 2009 and 2008. News Corp’s  MySpace which was the No. 1 in 2007 has slid to rank No. 7. However, this finding is exclusive of Google’s other entities like YouTube and email, – if both be included in Google’s domain, Google would still retain the top slot at 9.9 percent; followed by Facebook at 8.9 percent. Yahoo along with all of its properties ranks third at 8.1 percent.