New data from internet traffic analyst Experian Hitwise, released at the end of last month, reveals the most searched for brand on the face of the world wide web during 2011 was Facebook, the most popular social network. No surprises there then, as it was the same story 12 months earlier.
YouTube, which is in fact the world’s second most popular search engine, ranked at number two in the list, with the number one option for internet queries- Google- managing seventh in the league, which is rather impressive considering most of our web browsers now link directly to said site, so we don’t have to request it via a search. The planet’s top news website, Mail Online, is the only journalistic outlet aside from the BBC to appear (at #9), with retailers ebay (#3), Amazon (#4), Argos (#5), and Next (#10) all showing up too.
Perhaps the most staggering of all the numbers to come out of the report is that Facebook now represents 2% of all UK internet searches, which if nothing else begs the question ‘why do more people not use bookmarks or auto-complete?’ A copy of the full table is below, whilst the original press release that caught our eye can be found over here at hitwise.com