Facebook Most Searched Term in 2009

Social network search terms tops list for fourth straight year; Google top-visited Website for second straight year

New York, N.Y., Dec. 15, 2009 - Experian Hitwise has analyzed the top 300 search terms for 2009 and Facebook was the top-searched term overall.

This is the first year that the social networking Website has been the top search term overall, accounting for 0.67 percent of all searches. In fact, four variations of the term "facebook" were among the top 25 terms.

Facebook moved up from the 10th spot in 2008 to the top spot in 2009. MySpace was the second most-searched term in 2009, followed by Craigslist, YouTube and Yahoo Mail. Analysis of the search terms reveals that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 2.48 percent of the top 300 searches.
Adding up common search terms - e.g., facebook and facebook.com - Facebook terms accounted for 1.09 percent of all searches. MySpace terms accounted for 1.02 percent, Yahoo terms accounted for 0.95 percent, Google terms accounted for 0.63 percent, and Craigslist terms accounted for 0.62 percent.

Top-visited Websites in 2009

Google was the top-visited Website for the second straight year. Google accounted for 6.70 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009. Yahoo! Mail accounted for 4.44 percent of visits, followed by Facebook (4.26 percent), Yahoo! (3.36 percent) and MySpace (3 percent).

Adding up common properties - e.g., yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com - Yahoo! properties accounted for 10.60 percent of all U.S. visits. Google properties accounted for 9.93 percent, and Facebook properties accounted for 4.26 percent. The top 50 Websites accounted for 39 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009.

Source: Experian Hitwise