Hitwise: Social Networks Neck And Neck With Search Engines

As a group, search engines appear to be in the process of losing bragging rights in Australia. Social networking sites and forums (also taken as a group) topped search engines in terms of market share over Christmas and are poised to assume the lead on a permanent basis.

Hitwise’s Alan Long wrote this morning, "The chart below confirms that during the week of Christmas . . . the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time. While this looked like a short term lead, we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in week ending 16 January 2010."

That’s an impressive fact, especially if you consider how far social networks have come in the last six months.

The one potential problem with the Hitwise analysis is that YouTube has been classified as a social network. Marshall Kirkpatrick observed that the site also functions as a search engine, and so social networks and forums may not deserve to have it (and its impressive numbers) on their side.

Still, it’s obvious that social networks are becoming more and more popular however the numbers are spliced.

Related Articles:

> More Reporters Using Facebook And Twitter For Story Research

> 33% Of Online Pop. Pegged As "Conversationalists"

> 66% Of Government Agencies Use Social Networking

There are 6 Comments. Add Yours.

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Donate for Haiti
January 22, 2010 at 9:46 am

Both social networks and seach engines have been a great help for releif efforts in haiti…..

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Tim
January 22, 2010 at 12:31 pm

It won’t be long before social network burnout happens.

Who wants to socialize like a 12 year old girl? Endless posts and responses with most of them being meaningless.

Maybe I am wong, but it still feels like a fad to me. What ever happened to MySpace……LOL. Burnout? Or better product with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn ?

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Legitimate Home Business Opportunities Online
January 23, 2010 at 5:40 pm

It’s a war with social bookmarks and search engines. With social bookmarks you get indexed faster.It will be interesting to see what happens.

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Duran Seo
January 24, 2010 at 1:11 am

although it seems, that social networks may overcome the search engines in terms of news and “talks” on the Web. Google spotted the potential social networks has and embedded them into the search engine system itself.. with the ” real-time search results” and with the new caffeine algorithm. one can only imagine what will be in the future for news companies… when social networks and search engine will provide the latest most new information in matter of seconds after they happen … we can update on the weather in another place in the world by the users themselves…
if you look into the future you’ll see that no doubt that social networks will come a big part of the future of our lifes… in the terms of real time updated information, publicity, and news.

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Jack
January 24, 2010 at 6:46 pm

More evidence that it’s not just about the search engines. Our local business clients see the social properties driving direct traffic and those same properties ranking well in Google for their search terms. So it’s a double whammy.

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Richard
January 25, 2010 at 1:30 am

I think maybe there will be another big company for this new wave! It will just be like the giant google today.