The Most Searched For Terms of 2009

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.

Although MySpace has taken a lot of flack in recent memory, as Facebook has gained popularity, MySpace was still the second most-searched term in 2009, according to Experian Hitwise. It had been the top term for the previous three years.

Following MySpace on the list was Craigslist, YouTube, and Yahoo Mail. "Analysis of the search terms reveals that social networking–related terms dominated the results, accounting for 2.48 percent of the top 300 searches," a representative for Experian Hitwise tells WebProNews. 

"Adding up common search terms — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — Facebook terms accounted for 1.09 percent of all US searches," he says. "MySpace terms accounted for 1.02 percent, Yahoo terms accounted for 0.95 percent, Google terms accounted for 0.63 percent, and Craigslist terms accounted for 0.62 percent."

Google was unsurprisingly the top-visited website for the second straight year, accounting for 6.7% of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009, according to Experian Hitwise. Yahoo Mail accounted for 4.44% of visits, followed by Facebook (4.26%), Yahoo (3.36%) and MySpace (3%).

"Adding up common properties — e.g., yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com — Yahoo! properties accounted for 10.60 percent of all U.S. visits," the representative says. "Google properties accounted for 9.93 percent, and Facebook properties accounted for 4.26 percent. The top 50 Websites accounted for 39 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009."

As the landscape of the social media industry continues to change, it will be quite interesting to see how these results stack up to next year’s. It will be particularly interesting to see how MySpace and Yahoo fare.

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