Google beats Facebook, Yahoo! as top 2012

Google was the most visited US web brand in 2011, defeating social networking site Facebook and rival internet giants Yahoo! and Microsoft to gain the top spot.

An average of 153.4 million people in the US visited Google sites per month in the US from January to October, making it the leading internet brand in the country, said market researcher Nielsen in its end-of-year recap.

Facebook ranked second with an average of 137.6 million visitors per month, narrowly beating Yahoo!, which saw an average of 130.1 million visitors to its sites each month.

Recently released statistics from data intelligence company Experian Hitwise found Facebook to be both the most searched for term and the most visited website in 2011. According to Experian Hitwise facebook.com accounted for 10.29 per cent of all US visits from January to November 2011, while google.com ranked second and accounted for 7.70 per cent of all US visits.

Facebook also held an overwhelming lead over other competitors in the category of top US Social Networks & Blogs according to Nielsen, drawing more than three times the number of monthly visitors than its closest challenger, Google’s blogging platform Blogger, which saw an average of 45.7 million visitors per month.

Microblogging site Twitter.com ranked third with 23.6 million unique visitors and was followed by blogging platform WordPress.com (20.4 million visitors), aging social music network Myspace.com (17.9 million visitors), business-focused social network LinkedIn (17.0 million visitors) and blogging platform Tumblr (10.9 million visitors).

Reports that Google’s newly launched social network, Google+, was dying in the months after it launched due to a lack of visitors to the network proved to be untrue. The social network managed to climb into eighth place on the list with an average of 8.2 million visitors per month, narrowly beating Yahoo!’s (discontinued as of December 1) social networking aggregation service Yahoo! Pulse (8.0 million visitors) and Six Apart’s blogging service TypePad (7.8 million visitors). — AFP/Relaxnews

Top US web brands in 2011:

   1. Google

   2. Facebook

   3. Yahoo!

   4. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing

   5. YouTube

   6. Microsoft

   7. AOL Media Network

   8. Wikipedia

   9. Apple

  10. Ask Search Network

Top 10 US social networks & blogs

   1. Facebook

   2. Blogger

   3. Twitter.com

   4. WordPress.com

   5. Myspace.com

   6. LinkedIn

   7. Tumblr

   8. Google+

   9. Yahoo! Pulse

  10. Six Apart TypePad