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Facebook Leapfrogs Yahoo! to Become Second Most Visited Site in U.S.

by Amar Toor on February 18, 2010 at 03:40 PM

It was only a matter of time, really. After ceding its traffic throne to Google two years ago, Yahoo! has recently been knocked down yet another notch. As Mashable reports, Facebook has shot past the search engine to claim the title of second-most visited site in the US. According to new data released from Compete.com, 133.62 million people visited Facebook in January, compared to the 132 million who went to Yahoo!. Facebook had been gradually narrowing the gap for some time, but last month marked the first time that it actually overtook the once-proud portal.

Although Facebook still trails the Google juggernaut by a good 14 million monthly visitors, Compete's analysis shows that when it comes to actual time spent on a given site, Facebook far outpaces the competition. Last month, a whopping 11.6-percent of all online time was spent on Facebook, compared with just 4.25-percent on Yahoo, and 4.1-percent on Google. This large a discrepancy really isn't surprising, since Facebook is, for the most part, a destination Web site, and since both Google and Yahoo! primarily serve as vehicles to other sites. Those statistics have significance with advertisers, though, many of which are more interested in sustained consumer attention, rather than sheer volume.

Now, of course, the only mountain that's left for Facebook to climb is the Everest of Google. If the social networking site can manage to keep up the breakneck pace it's maintained over the past year, it seems likely it'll eventually claim the throne. But, as the directly confrontational Google Buzz social networking service proves, the Big G isn't just going to roll over. [From: Compete.com; via: Mashable]

Tags: facebook, google, googlebuzz, internet, internetuse, social networking, SocialNetworking, top, traffic, web, yahoo

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