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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Why Facebook hasn’t overtaken Google in the UK (and won’t for the foreseeable future)
March 19, 2010
You may well have seen our data illustrating that Facebook picked up more US Internet visits than Google.com last week (and possibly even seen me talking about it on Channel 4 News). As a consequence of the interest in the American data, a number of people have asked us: what about the UK? The answer is that Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK – and has been for a while now – but Google.co.uk remains ahead of it. As the chart below illustrates, last week Google.co.uk picked up 9.34% of UK Internet visits, while Facebook accounted for 6.01%. In the US, the respective figures were 7.03% (for Google.com) and 7.07%.
So, there are two main reasons why Facebook hasn’t yet caught up with Google in the UK (and doesn’t likely to do so in the foreseeable future):
• Facebook has a very similar share of the social networking markets in both the UK and US (51.9% and 51.3%respectively last week), but social networking is slight more popular in the US, so Facebook’s share of all Internet visits is higher in there.
• Google has a larger share of search market in the UK (over 90%) than in the US (just over 70%), and search engines as a category are also more popular on this side of the Atlantic.
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Posted by Robin Goad at 09:11 AM
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In Categories Google | Search | Social networks
Comments
Well, it's a fact that more and more people are using networking websites. I think it's only a matter of time for Facebook to overtake Google not only in the UK but worldwide.
Posted by M.A | February 7, 2011 02:36 PM
Personally, I have never found Facebook particularly enlightening. I know quite a few people who keep up with each other's activities via Facebook, but they gather socially in brick-and-mortar and outdoors surroundings. In other words, they use Facebook as a means of tracking each other's parties and outdoor excursions. I, on the other hand, prefer Meetup.com.
Posted by Dave | March 21, 2010 03:30 PM