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.
Credit goes to Robin Goad for monitoring the situation, and he wrote, "As the chart below illustrates, on Christmas Day (December 25th) facebook.com accounted for 10.50% of all UK Internet visits, while the figure for google.co.uk was 9.77%."
Then Goad continued, "This was the first time that Facebook has ever been the most popular UK website . . ."
Granted, the odds of Facebook staying ahead of Google are low; people will stop saying "Merry Christmas" to all their acquaintances before long, and they’ll have less spare time as they head back to work and school, too.
Still, becoming the most-visited site in the UK is obviously an important achievement for Facebook, and the Experian Hitwise graph shows that the social network’s growth is a steady-ish thing.
Congrats to Facebook on both the milestone and handling all the traffic without issue.