Facebook strengthens visitor numbers in the US, Google trailing 

Monday, November 22 2010 by Steve Swallow

Facebook attracted one in four of all US page views in the week ending November 13th, according to new research, underlining the potential potency of website promotions through the social networking site.

A quarter of all page views in the US were directed to Facebook during the week ending November 13th, the Experian Hitwise data shows.

This is nearly four times the views by second ranked website YouTube, which attracted just 6.93 per cent of total US page views.

Facebook visits also made up a high proportion of US internet visits in the same week - reflecting one in ten of every internet use in the week ending November 13th. This is a 60 per cent increase compared to the same week in 2009, when US visits share for the social media site stood at just 6.41 per cent.

Google's homepage took a 7.21 proportion of the internet visits share during the same week this year, while attracting 5.32 per cent of page views overall in the US.

Facebook may yet take more hits away from Google too, with its website promotion set to improve following the proposed introduction of an alternative to email by the social media site.

Entitled Project Titan, the new service is widely expected to rival the likes of Yahoo! and Gmail when it is introduced, with the offer of @facebook.com email addresses for users.

Further analytics by Hitwise indicates that one in ten of the visitors to Facebook into October visited an email service before going to the site, which suggests that this move is a natural one.

In addition to having the potential to boost traffic to the site in the US, internet consultants are no doubt equally optimistic about the impact of the service on the UK Facebook web share.

The social networking site is Google's closest rival in the UK too, albeit not quite enjoying the same dominating success in the US. Google accounts for nine per cent of UK internet visits, compared to Facebook's 7.27 per cent.

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