

Facebook.com overtakes Google.com as most visited USA domain. - mmaunder
http://markmaunder.com/2010/facebook-com-overtakes-google-com-as-most-visited-usa-domain/

======
symesc
I wonder which will grow faster over the next 5 years: Facebook or the rest of
the Internet?

If it's the rest of the Internet, then Google is better positioned.

What's striking to me is how much Facebook's approach is not "of" the
Internet; Facebook is a site that takes the best of the Internet and places it
within the borders of its own site. They've done a great job of that to date:
my mum uses it every day and loves it.

Google appears much more inclined to believe it will grow as the Internet
grows, and they are investing accordingly. True, they haven't hit many home
runs outside of search, but they are willing to contribute to the web, which
is the ultimate vendor-agnostic platform.

Google is investing in things it can't control. Facebook is investing only in
things it can. I'm overgeneralizing of course, but over time I think Google's
open nature wins because consumers eventually reject those companies who gain
too much control.

~~~
freetard
> True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search

Except for youtube which is #4 worldwide and blogger.com #7, not to mention
their adsense ads that are all over the web. And don't forget buzz, that is
building an open distributed social network over the internet. I think google
is doing real fine against facebook.

~~~
axod
I was with you until you mentioned "buzz". I think the jury's out on that one.

~~~
seldo
I'd even say the jury has returned a verdict of "failed" already.

~~~
johnfn
You can never be too sure. After all, chrome floundered in market share for a
while before it really developed. Google certainly isn't a company to just let
something decent lie around.

~~~
pt
orkut anyone?

------
fjabre
A slight oversight, technicality or link bait? Here's the real deal:

"But Tatham noted that when he added up traffic on all Google properties like
Google Maps and YouTube, the company's sites comprised 11.03% of visits. Yahoo
(YHOO, Fortune 500) was second with 10.98%."

Facebook still has some catching up to do.

------
narendranag
I recently managed a month-long ad-campaign for a client trying to attract
Indians wanting to study abroad on both Google and Facebook.

Takeaways:

We spent 1/5th the money on FB to get the same number of people on our landing
page.

The % of people filling up the landing page form was approximately the same
from FB and Google on weekdays. Google traffic did better on weekends.

FB ads work best when they don't try to do a hard sell. Google ads work better
when there is a hard sell.

I think this has to do with user intent. On Goog, people are already looking
for something, so directly addressing that is a good idea. On FB, people will
look at an ad and get curious only if you get their interest, and it doesn't
look like you're saying 'GIVE ME YOUR MONEY' :)

~~~
krschultz
That's also aimed really specifically squarely at FB's primary demographic -
college students. For the majority of businesses that won't be the case.

~~~
narendranag
Interestingly, I think FB's demographics map changes when you move to a
country like India or Brazil.

------
theli0nheart
Great job Facebook.

However, I don't see Facebook replacing Google as the primary advertising
medium on the Internet--ever. Google's power is that its ads can be placed
anywhere with no action on the user's end to be targeted appropriately.
Adsense is totally plug-and-play.

To compete with Google, Facebook needs to find a better way to syndicate its
ads across the Internet. Unfortunately for them, however, all their
advertising power is stuck inside their network. You need to log into Facebook
to get targeted ads, which is a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome.

We'll see how it plays out, but IMHO Facebook needs to rethink its advertising
strategy to even begin competing with the likes of Google.

~~~
sonnyz
If I'm looking to buy something and don't know where to get it, I go to
Google. So the ads are actually useful to me. I never go to Facebook to search
for something I want to buy.

I'm sure many people follow Facebook ads, but I'm not one of them. Especially
since they are mostly trying to trick people. Like showing random pictures in
the ads that have no meaning to the actual product.

~~~
jfarmer
Facebook ads are less compelling from the supply side, but in some cases more
impressive from the demand side. Companies like Groupon make extensive use of
Facebook's demographic targeting, for example, and local advertising is only
going to grow over the next five years.

Facebook is also finally moving into virtual currency, with the launch of
Facbeook credits. Did you know Zynga is the second largest PayPal merchant
after eBay itself?

------
bmalicoat
It is mentioned in the CNN article and I wonder how relevant it is; Myspace
was once the most visited domain. If Facebook can knock Myspace off the list
then surely something newer and more exclusive can knock Facebook off.

Personally I switched to Facebook because it was exclusive to universities and
I could see who was in my classes. Now that functionality is gone and pages
are being filled with garbage apps more and more. I can definitely see another
site that starts off exclusive to some demographic and slowly grows and
actually stays 'pure' like the original Facebook beating Facebook.

Also am I the only one unsure how these stats are collected? For instance
using a built-in search on the iPhone or in Firefox, are those considered
visiting a domain because you reach google.com or do you have to explicitly
type it and visit it with no referrer (I think the search bars put in some
metadata to identify themselves, could be wrong though)?

------
seldo
Sit up and take note, kids: this is an early sign of a coming change in the
tide of how we use the web. A shift from search to social surfacing for
content discovery is under way.

Google will surely fight back, and probably be back on top by next week, but
the trend is clear. This is not the beginning of the end for Google, but it
is, as they say, the end of the beginning.

Facebook works the way humans work: people hear about stuff from the people
around them. Google has to do crazy AI gymnastics to determine intent of
keywords, and yet still people often can't find things simply because the
keywords they pick aren't the "right" ones, leaving them frustrated. But their
friends always know what they mean. (Twitter is also very, very well
positioned for this kind of ambient sharing)

~~~
brandonkm
I remain unconvinced that this shift is taking place on the scale you're
referencing. Search is a fundamental web activity that isn't mutually
exclusive from "social surfacing" for discovering content. Rather, they are
complimentary to each other and the main points of differentiation are with
branding and marketing rather than any specific shift toward one or the other.

I also think its a bit simplistic to state 'Facebook works the way humans
work' as people hear about stuff through numerous other channels than the
people around them (ie: nyt.com dining & wine section for a new restaurant).

The 'crazy AI gymnastics' Google is doing isn't for nothing. I actually think
those gymnastics are advancing the web in ways other companies aren't. There
will always be some overhead to interacting with your friends on the web and
those gymnastics Google is doing make the web a better platform for people to
interact with (more like your friend).

~~~
seldo
I don't think the absolute volume of searches will ever decline. However, as a
percentage of attention, social surfacing of content will continue to grow.

Take your Dining&Wine section example: that's what they did 3 years ago. But
_10_ years ago -- and still today -- they're much more likely to visit
somewhere that a friend mentioned they visited. The social discovery mechanism
is so natural that you don't even think about it as a discovery mechanism, but
it's really the dominant source of information for nearly everybody. Facebook
and other social networks are only just learning the right way to use that
data (and the ground is littered with companies that have failed, even with
the same data).

------
ugh
“(…) Facebook may be a bigger success than Google long term (…)”

To extend on that: Facebook won’t replace Google. Facebook and Google get so
many visits because of different things. Demand for search won’t falter
because social networks increase in popularity. I, at least, cannot see how
that would be possible.

But – just so there are no misunderstandings – Google and Facebook are
nevertheless clearly competitors. There is a finite amount of money that will
be spent on advertising and Google and Facebook will both be fighting for a
large piece that cake. And at some point in the future online advertising will
have grown up so that there won’t be always more and more money coming into
the system.

~~~
bradbeattie
Note that Google is starting to step on Facebook's toes a little with Google
Buzz. I don't think it'll put more than the tiniest dent in Facebook, but they
aren't entirely mutually exclusive.

~~~
ugh
Google’s success constrains Facebook and Facebook’s success constrains Google
(even more). I guess they aren’t completely happy neighbors.

------
antropy
Would be interested to know how they calculate the traffic data because there
seels to be a bias. Facebook.com is often used worldwide vs. Google has
different domain names by key geographical areas (e.g. google.fr, google.be,
etc)

~~~
bigbang
The article mentions its only in US domains.

------
mburney
Makes me think of how many times per day I check my facebook page for no
reason at all (except that I'm bored or looking for a distraction). I guess
facebook really is the new TV. In fact, after seeing the word "facebook" in
this thread, I have an urge to check my facebook page once again.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
This is why I recently deleted my facebook account. I was losing that brain
dead, no pressure down time (which I found facebook didn't provide).

------
yv
> They already have a distributed network of sites in the form of Facebook
> Connect which has deeper integration than AdSense. That means Facebook gets
> more data about visitors to those sites than Google AdSense.

What about all those sites using Google Analytics? even Twitter is among them.

------
garply
I've found that the longer I'm out of college, the less I use facebook.

------
greenlblue
As it is there isn't much overlap between what facebook does and what google
does so the comparison seems moot. Sure they both aggregate data about people
and things but from the user's perspective the experience of that data are
light years apart. You'd be surprised how much information my local grocery
store has on me but I don't pit my local grocery store against google and
compare monetization strategies.

------
thefool
The problem with this is that whereas people go on facebook to network, the go
on google to buy things.

The ad money is at the same place where people are spending their money.

Look at facebook ads, a lot of them are for other social networking sites,
very few are for actual products or services.

Until facebook becomes a place where people go to shop, their ads will be in a
completely different league.

------
axod
Nitpicking, but the title isn't very clear.

"Facebook.com overtakes Google.com as most visited domain by people living in
USA." might be better.

Title makes it sound like 'google.com and facebook.com are both USA domains,
and facebook has overtaken google as most visited'.

------
zeraholladay
Most Facebook users can't even find facebook.com without Google:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php#comments).
Am I missing something?

~~~
Hexstream
_Some_ Facebook users can't. And a large proportion of those comments are
probably just trolls.

~~~
zeraholladay
My apologies if my comment generalizes Facebook users but I have a difficult
time entertaining any comparison between Facebook and Google. What about
myspace, Yahoo, AOL? Each of these social sites failed since they catered to
the LCD. The next wave of net users thought they were lame. The net doesn't
work like other entertainment in that if you don't like the content, then you
can make your own or go somewhere else. Facebook is doomed the day pics of
grandchildren quit getting uploaded or everybody realizes they've friended
their employer.

------
cookiecaper
This is so interesting because Facebook, unlike Google, still has not
demonstrated a viable, profitable plan for its operations. They have ads but
afaik, like most ad supported sites, they don't make back the money. Maybe
Facebook Credits are starting to catch on.

The thing is, unlike Google, which had a good, scalable business plan, and was
able to grow to its current size reasonably and organically, Facebook is
continually propped up by outside investment and debt.

Facebook also right now has a much, much smaller staff than Google to be
handling all of that traffic and attention.

Do we expect Facebook to become a mainstay or will they become too big for
their britches and topple? What do you people think?

