If any Facebook employees were still manning their stations two days ago, you can be sure they sent up a cheer as traffic data rolled in.  A report from Experian Hitwise has indicated that, at least in the UK, Facebook received more visits than Google for the first time ever.

It can be a bit of a balancing act when reports concerning the search market come out; if comScore, Experian Hitwise, and Nielsen all say different things, it’s embarrassing to have three contradictory headlines.  New numbers from Experian Hitwise tend to agree with yesterday’s comScore stats in asserting that November was a good month for Bing, however.

comScore said Google’s market share went down, Yahoo’s went down, and Bing’s went up.  Experian Hitwise found that Google’s share went down, Yahoo’s went up, and Bing’s also increased a bit.

Update:  Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

New Experian Hitwise stats regarding the search market in August have arrived, and truth be told, they’re not that exciting; very little changed compared to July.  However, August did act as a sort of baseline for the Bing-Yahoo combo.

Experian Hitwise noted in an official statement, "The percentage of U.S. searches for the one-week ending Aug. 28, 2010 for the Bing combined powered search accounted for 24.56 percent, as Yahoo! Search and Bing received 14.32 percent and 10.24 percent, respectively."

According to research from Experian Hitwise, Facebook accounts for one in six page views in the UK. It’s the second most visited site.

In July, Facebook made up 7.14% of all UK Internet visits, according to the firm. It accounted for over half (54.48%) of all visits to social networking sites. Google UK was the top dog at 9.59% of visits.

May went Google’s way, according to new statistics from Experience Hitwise.  Indeed, although the numbers supplied by comScore and Nielsen earlier this month suggested almost the exact opposite, Experian Hitwise’s data indicates that Google gained market share while Yahoo and Bing lost.

Statistics regarding search engines’ market share can be difficult to interpret; it’s often necessary to gauge the importance of a gain or loss in comparison to a companies’ size, how Yahoo and Microsoft have performed in relation to each other and with respect to their rivals, and several other things.  But Experian Hitwise’s April data tells a straightforward tale: Google won.

Experian Hitwise announced that it has found Facebook to be the top search term overall for the year 2009 after analyzing the top 300 search terms for the year. This is the first year Facebook has been the top search term, and it accounted for 0.67% of all searches, according to the research firm.

Variations of the term Facebook actually accounted for four of the top twenty-five terms, the firm says. "Facebook" itself moved up from the 10th spot in 2008 to the top spot in 2009.

You may have read about the online price wars going on this holiday season between Walmart and Amazon. It looks like both companies are doing quite well as a result (not that that is much of a surprise). According to data from Experian Hitwise, Walmart was the top retail site on Thanksgiving Day, and Amazon was the top retail site on Black Friday.