“Facebook” Ranks 1st in Most Searched Key Words in US

According to a recent report from Experien, a global information services group with operations in 41 countries, Facebook was the most searched term overall in the United States, accounting  for 4.13 percent of all searches, which is a 33 percent increase over 2011. When combined with key terms  ‘facebook login’ which was fourth on the ranking, ‘facebook.com’ which was fifth and ‘www.facebook.com’ which was eighth, the four Facebook search terms made up 5.62 percent of all U.S. searches, which is a 27 percent increase from 2011.

The top ten most searched key words or key terms in the U.S. from January to November 2012 were: ‘Facebook’; ‘YouTube’; ‘craigslist’; ‘Facebook login’; facebook.com’; ‘yahoo’; ‘eBay’; ‘www.facebook.com’; ‘MapQuest’; and ‘amazon’. New terms that entered the top 50 search terms for 2012 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof – an acronym for Plenty of Fish, the top visited dating site in the US. Said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services, “Navigational searches continue to dominate the top search results as users continue to visit their favorite sites via search engines instead of directly entering a web address into their browsers URL bar. Single-word searches grew 16 percent in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results.”

Within the same period, Experien said the top ten most visited Websites were: ‘www.facebook.com’; ‘www.google.com’; ‘www.youtube.com’; ‘mail.yahoo.com’; ‘www.yahoo.com’; ‘www.bing.com’; ‘search.yahoo.com’; ‘www.gmail.com’; ‘www.msn.com’;  and ‘www.ebay.com’. Experien further noted that Facebook was the top-visited Website for the third year and accounted for 79.1 billion total US visits. Google.com ranked second, with 78.5 billion total US visits — followed by YouTube (25.9 billion), Yahoo! Mail (22.2 billion) and Yahoo! (20.8 billion). eBay ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 2009. The top 10 Websites accounted for 276.3 billion total US visits or 32 percent of all U.S. Internet visits in 2012.

Tancer observed that “Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.” The top ten public figures most searched were Whitney Houston, Justin Beiber, Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, Bobby Kristina, and Miley Cyrus. The top five searched for artists/bands were One Direction, Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, Beyonce and Zac Brown Ban. The top searched-for athletes were Tiger Woods, Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning. The top searched for sports team was the Dallas Cowboys. The top five most searched TV shows were American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, The Voice, The Bachelor, and South Park.