Facebook is the Most-Visited Site and Most-Searched Term of 2012

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For the third year in a row, Facebook is the most-visited website in the U.S.  According to Experian Hitwise data, from January to November 2012 the social network giant attracted a total of 79.1 billion U.S. visits.  The runner-up, Google, accounted for 78.5 billion total U.S. visits and YouTube came in third with 25.9 billion. The top ten list was almost exactly the same as 2011, with the exception of eBay returning to the list for the first time since 2009.  The top 10 websites accounted for 276.3 billion total U.S. visits this year, which was slightly up compared to 2011.

Here is the full list of the top 10 most-visited websites of 2012:

1. www.facebook.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.youtube.com
4. Mail.yahoo.com
5. www.yahoo.com
6. www.bing.com
7. Search.yahoo.com
8. www.gmail.com
9. www.msn.com
10. www.ebay.com

Facebook was also the most common search term in the U.S. this year for the fourth straight year.  It was part of an increase in navigational searching that saw one-word searches climb by 16%.

This data, also by Experian, covers search activity on more than 60 search engines and website visits between January and November but does not include mobile searches or traffic.

The term “facebook” accounted for 4.13% of all searches, which is a 33% increase from 2011.  Also on the list were other Facebook-related terms including “facebook login,” “facebook.com,” and www.facebook.com.”  Altogether, these four terms made up 5.62 of all U.S. searches (a 27% increase from 2011).

“Youtube” remained in the second spot for the second year in a row, with terms accounting for 1.67% of all searches in the U.S., marking a 27% rise from last year.  Altogether, Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.91%, up 20% from 2011.

Seven of the terms on this year’s list are a single word, a trend that was pretty big this year.  According to Experian’s Bill Tancer, “Single-word searches grew 16 percent in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results.  Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.”

Here is the full list of the top 10 most searched terms of 2012:

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Craigslist
4. Facebook login
5. Facebook.com
6. Yahoo
7. Ebay
8. www.facebook.com
9. Mapquest
10. Amazon

Here are three other interesting bits of information that we learned from the study:

• The top 50 search terms accounted for more than 12% of all Internet searches in 2012.
• New terms on the list of the top 50 search terms for 2012 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof (an acronym for Plenty of Fish, the most visited dating site in the US.)
• “Yahoo” and “ebay” have made the top 10 list of most searched terms since it was started in 2006.
• The boy band One Direction was the most-searched for image on Google.

Do you think that Facebook will continue to come out on top in the next few years?

Incoming search terms:

• facebook king