Facebook.com overtakes Google.com as most visited USA domain.

http://markmaunder.com/2010/facebook-com-overtakes-google-com-as-most-visited-usa-domain/

by mmaunder • 16 years ago

48 48 16 years ago

antropy• 16 years ago

Would be interested to know how they calculate the traffic data because there seels to be a bias. Facebook.com is often used worldwide vs. Google has different domain names by key geographical areas (e.g. google.fr, google.be, etc)

bigbang• 16 years ago

The article mentions its only in US domains.

theli0nheart• 16 years ago

Great job Facebook.

However, I don't see Facebook replacing Google as the primary advertising medium on the Internet--ever. Google's power is that its ads can be placed anywhere with no action on the user's end to be targeted appropriately. Adsense is totally plug-and-play.

To compete with Google, Facebook needs to find a better way to syndicate its ads across the Internet. Unfortunately for them, however, all their advertising power is stuck inside their network. You need to log into Facebook to get targeted ads, which is a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome.

We'll see how it plays out, but IMHO Facebook needs to rethink its advertising strategy to even begin competing with the likes of Google.

jfarmer2• 16 years ago

Something like 90% of Google's net revenue comes from properties Google owns.

sonnyz• 16 years ago

If I'm looking to buy something and don't know where to get it, I go to Google. So the ads are actually useful to me. I never go to Facebook to search for something I want to buy.

I'm sure many people follow Facebook ads, but I'm not one of them. Especially since they are mostly trying to trick people. Like showing random pictures in the ads that have no meaning to the actual product.

axod3• 16 years ago

Also the stupid "Are you 31 years old? Then you can get a FREE <product>"

I wonder how many people seriously think that the adverts aren't pulling your age out of your profile. Enough to make it work I'm sure though.

jfarmer2• 16 years ago

Facebook ads are less compelling from the supply side, but in some cases more impressive from the demand side. Companies like Groupon make extensive use of Facebook's demographic targeting, for example, and local advertising is only going to grow over the next five years.

Facebook is also finally moving into virtual currency, with the launch of Facbeook credits. Did you know Zynga is the second largest PayPal merchant after eBay itself?

vessenes• 16 years ago

This is interesting. I see some people tweeting / facebook status updating saying things like "Any recommendations for a good TV?" or perhaps, a cryptic ... "shopping for HDTV with 3d @ bestbuy".

The right language parsing makes these incredibly high value targets for TV ads, review sites, etc.

Probably a few years down the road, or alternatively FB just needs to get a few mutant geniuses locked in a room for six months.

prospero2• 16 years ago

While Facebook may know more about its users, Google still knows more about what the user wants right that moment. The average person looking for a TV is more likely to search for one on Google than post about it on their profile (or tweet about it, for that matter).

I'm also curious if the people that spend the most time on Facebook are the people who earn Facebook the most money. It seems like the high school and college students who can spend all their time browsing the site are also the people least likely to spend money. Does anyone have any insight into the relative value of different demographics?

gojomo2• 16 years ago

Young high-school/college demographics spend a lot of money, overall -- look how much TV/movie/radio media is directed at them. (And, they form brand loyalties that last through their later peak income years.)

smakz• 16 years ago

It's not just about syndicating ads. If anything syndicating ads is just another way to expand reach. Facebook has plenty of reach on it's own site, with 450 million users and counting.

Facebook might have nice structured data about demographics and other user information but dollar for dollar investing in Google Adwords is exponentially more effective then Facebook. The reason being advertising on Facebook is more akin to advertising on TV, people using the service aren't searching for anything and ads feel exactly like ads. Adwords works because they actually help people find what they're looking for.

Facebook may have achieved several hundred million dollars in advertising revenue (and search deals with Microsoft) the last few years, but if they are going to convince people to invest a billion dollars, or at Google's level several tens of billions of dollars, in advertising dollars, they need to figure out a way to make advertising on Facebook at least as effective as Google.

I for one, simply don't see that happening - ever. I see Facebook's destiny as a very low margin potentially public social network company, but the next Google? That's a long long loooooong shot.

gojomo2• 16 years ago

I don't see Facebook replacing Google as the primary advertising medium on the Internet--ever.

'Ever' is a long time.

The key issue is that right now, Google is a better place to start a commerce-oriented (and especially high-dollar commerce-oriented) task, and reveal (by your queries) your intent in a way advertisers can hook into.

But, with enough work and experimentation, could Facebook become a better place to start such tasks, and reveal such intent?

It's not out of the question, and Facebook should have internal experiments trying to create -- and be on the lookout for acquisitions of -- features that bring the initiation of ad-friendly commerce-oriented tasks into their platform.

warfangle• 16 years ago

I could see Facebook extending on facebook connect on this front:

For sites that had facebook connect available for login, they would be able to serve ads customized on a per-user basis - provided the underlying http ad request can include some sort of unique per-session hash, instead of being funneled through the traditional facebook connect API.

Their problem, of course, comes with attempting to monetize areas of their site which do not require a facebook connect-enabled login to continue.

I'd be frightened of this for a few reasons:

- FBC may become required - not optional - on many sites which do not currently require it. The flip side of this is it forces the sites which wish to fully monetize to actually come up with interesting and unique ways to tie into the user's social graph (in order to drive uptake of FBC as a protocol). On the other hand, it provides single sign on - which many, many users have been clamoring for (even if they didn't know it), for years.

- I dislike the FBC protocol, and wish they had gone MySpace's route with OpenSocial. It's much more sane to deal with. If the FBC protocol and widget mechanism were more sane, it would drive up adoption on many current platforms that don't currently offer it.

- This potentially has even greater security and privacy concerns than Google has ever had to deal with. This may turn out to be a good thing.

ugh2• 16 years ago

“(…) Facebook may be a bigger success than Google long term (…)”

To extend on that: Facebook won’t replace Google. Facebook and Google get so many visits because of different things. Demand for search won’t falter because social networks increase in popularity. I, at least, cannot see how that would be possible.

But – just so there are no misunderstandings – Google and Facebook are nevertheless clearly competitors. There is a finite amount of money that will be spent on advertising and Google and Facebook will both be fighting for a large piece that cake. And at some point in the future online advertising will have grown up so that there won’t be always more and more money coming into the system.

bradbeattie• 16 years ago

Note that Google is starting to step on Facebook's toes a little with Google Buzz. I don't think it'll put more than the tiniest dent in Facebook, but they aren't entirely mutually exclusive.

ugh2• 16 years ago

Google’s success constrains Facebook and Facebook’s success constrains Google (even more). I guess they aren’t completely happy neighbors.

symesc• 16 years ago

I wonder which will grow faster over the next 5 years: Facebook or the rest of the Internet?

If it's the rest of the Internet, then Google is better positioned.

What's striking to me is how much Facebook's approach is not "of" the Internet; Facebook is a site that takes the best of the Internet and places it within the borders of its own site. They've done a great job of that to date: my mum uses it every day and loves it.

Google appears much more inclined to believe it will grow as the Internet grows, and they are investing accordingly. True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search, but they are willing to contribute to the web, which is the ultimate vendor-agnostic platform.

Google is investing in things it can't control. Facebook is investing only in things it can. I'm overgeneralizing of course, but over time I think Google's open nature wins because consumers eventually reject those companies who gain too much control.

freetard• 16 years ago

> True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search

Except for youtube which is #4 worldwide and blogger.com #7, not to mention their adsense ads that are all over the web. And don't forget buzz, that is building an open distributed social network over the internet. I think google is doing real fine against facebook.

samg2• 16 years ago

Google purchased Youtube and Blogger after they had both hit big-time traction. I'd hardly credit either success to Google. And Buzz a home run? Really?

axod3• 16 years ago

I was with you until you mentioned "buzz". I think the jury's out on that one.

axod3• 16 years ago

Nitpicking, but the title isn't very clear.

"Facebook.com overtakes Google.com as most visited domain by people living in USA." might be better.

Title makes it sound like 'google.com and facebook.com are both USA domains, and facebook has overtaken google as most visited'.

fjabre• 16 years ago

A slight oversight, technicality or link bait? Here's the real deal:

"But Tatham noted that when he added up traffic on all Google properties like Google Maps and YouTube, the company's sites comprised 11.03% of visits. Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) was second with 10.98%."

Facebook still has some catching up to do.

zeraholladay2• 16 years ago

Most Facebook users can't even find facebook.com without Google: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo.... Am I missing something?

Hexstream• 16 years ago

Some Facebook users can't. And a large proportion of those comments are probably just trolls.

zeraholladay2• 16 years ago

My apologies if my comment generalizes Facebook users but I have a difficult time entertaining any comparison between Facebook and Google. What about myspace, Yahoo, AOL? Each of these social sites failed since they catered to the LCD. The next wave of net users thought they were lame. The net doesn't work like other entertainment in that if you don't like the content, then you can make your own or go somewhere else. Facebook is doomed the day pics of grandchildren quit getting uploaded or everybody realizes they've friended their employer.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

This is so interesting because Facebook, unlike Google, still has not demonstrated a viable, profitable plan for its operations. They have ads but afaik, like most ad supported sites, they don't make back the money. Maybe Facebook Credits are starting to catch on.

The thing is, unlike Google, which had a good, scalable business plan, and was able to grow to its current size reasonably and organically, Facebook is continually propped up by outside investment and debt.

Facebook also right now has a much, much smaller staff than Google to be handling all of that traffic and attention.

Do we expect Facebook to become a mainstay or will they become too big for their britches and topple? What do you people think?

greenlblue• 16 years ago

As it is there isn't much overlap between what facebook does and what google does so the comparison seems moot. Sure they both aggregate data about people and things but from the user's perspective the experience of that data are light years apart. You'd be surprised how much information my local grocery store has on me but I don't pit my local grocery store against google and compare monetization strategies.

bmalicoat• 16 years ago

It is mentioned in the CNN article and I wonder how relevant it is; Myspace was once the most visited domain. If Facebook can knock Myspace off the list then surely something newer and more exclusive can knock Facebook off.

Personally I switched to Facebook because it was exclusive to universities and I could see who was in my classes. Now that functionality is gone and pages are being filled with garbage apps more and more. I can definitely see another site that starts off exclusive to some demographic and slowly grows and actually stays 'pure' like the original Facebook beating Facebook.

Also am I the only one unsure how these stats are collected? For instance using a built-in search on the iPhone or in Firefox, are those considered visiting a domain because you reach google.com or do you have to explicitly type it and visit it with no referrer (I think the search bars put in some metadata to identify themselves, could be wrong though)?

thefool• 16 years ago

The problem with this is that whereas people go on facebook to network, the go on google to buy things.

The ad money is at the same place where people are spending their money.

Look at facebook ads, a lot of them are for other social networking sites, very few are for actual products or services.

Until facebook becomes a place where people go to shop, their ads will be in a completely different league.

mburney• 16 years ago

Makes me think of how many times per day I check my facebook page for no reason at all (except that I'm bored or looking for a distraction). I guess facebook really is the new TV. In fact, after seeing the word "facebook" in this thread, I have an urge to check my facebook page once again.

TeHCrAzY• 16 years ago

This is why I recently deleted my facebook account. I was losing that brain dead, no pressure down time (which I found facebook didn't provide).

narendranag2• 16 years ago

I recently managed a month-long ad-campaign for a client trying to attract Indians wanting to study abroad on both Google and Facebook.

Takeaways:

We spent 1/5th the money on FB to get the same number of people on our landing page.

The % of people filling up the landing page form was approximately the same from FB and Google on weekdays. Google traffic did better on weekends.

FB ads work best when they don't try to do a hard sell. Google ads work better when there is a hard sell.

I think this has to do with user intent. On Goog, people are already looking for something, so directly addressing that is a good idea. On FB, people will look at an ad and get curious only if you get their interest, and it doesn't look like you're saying 'GIVE ME YOUR MONEY' :)

krschultz• 16 years ago

That's also aimed really specifically squarely at FB's primary demographic - college students. For the majority of businesses that won't be the case.

narendranag2• 16 years ago

Interestingly, I think FB's demographics map changes when you move to a country like India or Brazil.

seldo3• 16 years ago

Sit up and take note, kids: this is an early sign of a coming change in the tide of how we use the web. A shift from search to social surfacing for content discovery is under way.

Google will surely fight back, and probably be back on top by next week, but the trend is clear. This is not the beginning of the end for Google, but it is, as they say, the end of the beginning.

Facebook works the way humans work: people hear about stuff from the people around them. Google has to do crazy AI gymnastics to determine intent of keywords, and yet still people often can't find things simply because the keywords they pick aren't the "right" ones, leaving them frustrated. But their friends always know what they mean. (Twitter is also very, very well positioned for this kind of ambient sharing)

jrockway• 16 years ago

I don't think it means this. I think it means people want to look at pictures of their friends rather than research random things on the Internet.

brandonkm• 16 years ago

I remain unconvinced that this shift is taking place on the scale you're referencing. Search is a fundamental web activity that isn't mutually exclusive from "social surfacing" for discovering content. Rather, they are complimentary to each other and the main points of differentiation are with branding and marketing rather than any specific shift toward one or the other.

I also think its a bit simplistic to state 'Facebook works the way humans work' as people hear about stuff through numerous other channels than the people around them (ie: nyt.com dining & wine section for a new restaurant).

The 'crazy AI gymnastics' Google is doing isn't for nothing. I actually think those gymnastics are advancing the web in ways other companies aren't. There will always be some overhead to interacting with your friends on the web and those gymnastics Google is doing make the web a better platform for people to interact with (more like your friend).

seldo3• 16 years ago

I don't think the absolute volume of searches will ever decline. However, as a percentage of attention, social surfacing of content will continue to grow.

Take your Dining&Wine section example: that's what they did 3 years ago. But 10 years ago -- and still today -- they're much more likely to visit somewhere that a friend mentioned they visited. The social discovery mechanism is so natural that you don't even think about it as a discovery mechanism, but it's really the dominant source of information for nearly everybody. Facebook and other social networks are only just learning the right way to use that data (and the ground is littered with companies that have failed, even with the same data).

yv• 16 years ago

> They already have a distributed network of sites in the form of Facebook Connect which has deeper integration than AdSense. That means Facebook gets more data about visitors to those sites than Google AdSense.

What about all those sites using Google Analytics? even Twitter is among them.

garply• 16 years ago

I've found that the longer I'm out of college, the less I use facebook.

Facebook.com overtakes Google.com as most visited USA domain.

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