Facebook Remains Top Search Term on Internet: Report

For the third year in succession, social networking site Facebook (News - Alert) has become the most searched term on Internet in the United States, according to findings by consumer behavior analysis firm Experian Hitwise.

In the world’s most technologically advanced country, Facebook accounted for 3.10 percent of all searches in 2011. This figure is a 46 percent increase compared to 2010.

Four variations of the term “facebook” were among the top 10 terms and accounted for 4.42 percent of searches overall, a 24 percent increase from 2010.

Among the top 10 terms, “youtube“ moved up from the third spot in 2010 to the second spot in 2011. “Facebook login” was the third most-searched term in 2011, followed by “craigslist” and “facebook.com.”

Facebook.com moved up one spot in 2011 to be among the top five search terms, according to analyst firm.

Facebook was the top-visited Website for the second year and accounted for 10.29 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2011 — a 15 percent increase from 2010. Google.com ranked second, with 7.70 percent of visits — a 7 percent increase — followed by YouTube (News - Alert) (3.17 percent), Yahoo! Mail (2.95 percent) and Yahoo! (2.47 percent).

 Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking–related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches. This is an increase of 12 percent compared with 2010.

When combined, common search terms for Facebook — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — accounted for 3.48 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a 33 percent increase compared with 2010.

YouTube terms accounted for 1.36 percent, representing a 21 percent increase compared with 2010. Google (News - Alert) terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.59 percent — an increase of 27 percent compared with 2010. Yahoo terms accounted for 0.59 percent — an increase of 15 percent compared with 2010.

New terms that entered the top 50 search terms for 2011 included addicting games, amazon.com, cnn, chase online, face, facebook sign up, hotmail, lowes, pandora, twitter and you.

“Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar,” said Simon Bradstock, general manager of Experian Hitwise.

The fastest-moving search terms based on absolute change in 2011 included hurricane irene, bin laden wives, osama bin laden dead, les paul, nick ashford dies, apophis asteroid, sheen dumped, hurricane irene path and amber cole.