BCA

Facebook, the social network, was the most popular online search term among US consumers during the first eleven months of this year, figures from Experian Hitwise show.

According to the research firm’s estimates, 1.09% of all enquiries made by web users in the period from January to November were related to the Palo Alto-based portal itself, or a specific area of its site.

MySpace, which took the top spot for 2008 as a whole, fell to second, on 1.02%, with Yahoo’s various properties on 0.95%, Google’s portfolio of services on 0.63%, and Craigslist on 0.62%.

Looking more broadly, Experian Hitwise found that 2.48% of all such entries made via search engines like Bing were in some way linked to social networks.

In terms of visitor numbers, however, Google retained its pre-eminence, taking a 6.70% share during the timeframe under assessment.

Yahoo Mail was in second place on this measure, on 4.44%, followed by Facebook, on 4.26%, Yahoo’s homepage, on 3.36%, and MySpace, on 3.0%.

From World Advertising Research Center