Facebook Overtakes Google as the Most Searched Brand in the US

Facebook's rise to the number one position in global traffic passed another major point when a Hitwise statistics revealed that the term “Facebook” is the most popular among famous web-related brands for search engine queries originating from the United States.

Racking data from all major search providers, the Hitwise report claims that the word “Facebook” has been found most times amongst other terms in the root of search queries (searches containing “Facebook”).

As the Top Ten Searched Brands statistics shows (screenshot below), Facebook achieved a 2.80% search query share, in comparison with Google's 2.40%. That's 16% more than for the Mountain View-based company.

This can be seen as a success since the Google term featured all of its services including Maps, Translate, Apps, Docs, etc. An interesting fact revealed by the Hitwise report is that the firm registered 10,673 unique variations on the “Facebook” root term over the past week alone.

After reporting huge revenues and a considerable traffic increase, the web community awaits the moment when Facebook will overtake Google in global traffic to become the number one site on the web. Most experts have it at the end of 2010. This is a long way from the dorm-room where it all started.

Last month, Facebook overtook Google in the United States as the leader in traffic, after it more than doubled its user base in 2009. The company saw a 185% rise in traffic since 2009, also overtaking MySpace as the leading social network in May 2009.

Completing the top three is Yahoo with 1.60%. The former leader in global traffic, position lost to Google last year, saw a demise after it sold or retired many of its services in an effort to avoid becoming a web graveyard.

Other brand names ranked by Hitwise include Craiglist, MySpace, AOL, MSN, Walmart, Amazon and Netflix.