Facebook top search term in 2011

By Emil Protalinski | December 22, 2011, 9:38am PST

Summary: Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the US this year, accounting for 3.10/4.42 percent of all searches, depending on how you slice it. It was also the second-most visited web property.

Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the US this year. The data comes from competitive intelligence service Experian Hitwise, which analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011.
This is the third year in a row that Facebook has been the top search term overall, accounting for 3.10 percent of all searches, a 46 percent increase from last year. Looking at the top 10 terms, there were four variations of Facebook searchesw: “facebook,” “facebook login,” “facebook.com,” and “www.facebook.com.” Together, they accounted for 4.42 percent of searches overall, a 24 percent increase from last year.
As you can see in the chart above, the search term “youtube” moved up from the third spot in 2010 to the second spot in 2011. “Facebook login” was the third most-searched term in 2011, followed by “craigslist” and “facebook.com.” The last one moved up one spot in 2011 to be among the top five search terms.
Facebook was also the top-visited website for the second year in a row. It accounted for 10.29 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2011 – a 15 percent increase from 2010. Google.com ranked second, with 7.70 percent of visits, followed by YouTube (3.17 percent), Yahoo Mail (2.95 percent), and Yahoo (2.47 percent).
In terms of properties, Google still beat Facebook, since the latter only has one website. Google properties accounted for 11.98 percent of all U.S. visits - a 22 percent increase compared with 2010. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo properties accounted for 6.81 percent.
Facebook isn’t likely to pass Google next year but it has the potential to do so in the next few years. The social networking giant is already beating the search giant in a few other traffic-related areas, including top searches as outlined above, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook was crowned first here as well.