Back in March 2010, Hitwise reported that Facebook had surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website. Sure, it was a week’s worth of data but the writing has been on the wall ever since.

Then in May we learned that in the UK, people are visiting social networks more than they’re visiting search engines. Facebook dominates the current crop of social networks, accounting for the majority (55%) of all social site visits. When compared to the wider web, Google got around 9.3% of all web traffic, while Facebook captured just over 7%.

But when UK stats for all search engines were stacked up with data from all social sites, social networks attracted .55% more traffic than search engines.

The writing on the wall started to get a whole lot larger.

According to Alexa, Google.com is ranked Number 1 globally and Facebook is ranked Number 2.


Back when the Web was simply pages we clicked through on our computers, Google was top of the pops, hands-down delivering the world’s best search experience. It remains the best in its field today. The problem facing Google is that the Web is not simply pages being clicked anymore.

But as the Web becomes more dynamic, Google starts to falter.

Twitter, social networks, bookmarking sites and more have empowered and enabled the citizen journalist. Anyone can publish, sort through information in real time, and much of that data is contained within social networks so it becomes increasingly difficult for Google to capture, sort and index or deliver as real time news. Google knows it has a problem, the death of Michael Jackson torpedoed its problem into the spotlight, so it’s done a deal with Twitter but its own entry into social media has been a flop.

Google Buzz, launched in February, a feature that allowed users of its gmail service to share updates and content angered more than pleased users who, to their dismay, found their address books made public in the form of friend lists.

But Facebook too has a challenge. Its email service is cumbersome compared to gmail and if Google is right, and social connectivity is built upon email, then Facebook will need to lift its game to meet the challenges presented by the new battle arena.

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