Facebook raced past Google in 2010 to be become the most popular destination on the Internet, according to online aggregator Experian Hitwise. Facebook was ranked the No. 1 online destination for 2010 with 8.93 percent of U.S. visits from January through November of this year. Rounding out the top five were Google, ranked second with 7.19 percent of visits, Yahoo Mail with 3.52 percent, Yahoo with 3.3 percent and YouTube with 2.65 percent.
Hitwise also analyzed the top 1,000 online search terms and found that "Facebook" also ranked No. 1 for the second year in a row. It also surmised that four variations of Facebook queries received about 3.48 percent of all Internet searches, more than doubling its searches from 2009.
When I contacted Hitwise, a spokesman didn't seem have any physical numbers to give me saying than only an analyst had the raw data, specifically how many millions of users make a top Internet search term. However, Hitwise's competition, ComScore, recently released its monthly numbers for November 2010, which show that Yahoo still maintains a No. 1 spot -- barely -- with 180.9 million unique visitors. Next comes Google with 178.7 million, while Facebook ranks at No. 4 with 151.7 million.
