The social network topped the search charts in the US, accounting for just over three per cent of all searches, which was a 46 per cent rise on the year according to USENET newsgroup posts.
The newsgroup post credits online measurement company, Experian Hitwise, who compiled the data, which also showed that four variations of the term Facebook were among the top 10 searched for words in the US on the web during 2011.
Facebook was also the most-visited Web site, followed by Google, YouTube, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo, Bing, Yahoo Search, Gmail, Microsoft’s Live.com, and MSN.com.
The habit of typing in favourite websites, rather than entering them in the address bar, is partly driven by ‘predictive search’, where Google or other search engines ‘fill in’ search terms as you type. It’s just easier to search rather than type in a web address that might not work.
Most of us simply can’t be bothered to move the cursor up the screen to type in a fiddly address when Google or other search engines will fill it in for us.
It’s also much easier on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, where typing and navigating can be difficult.
The full list looks like this:
1. facebook
2. youtube
3. facebook login
4. craigslist
5. facebook.com
6. yahoo
7. ebay
8. www.facebook.com
9. mapquest
10. yahoo.com
This is the third year in a row that “facebook” has topped the list. Searches for that one-word term were up 46% this year from 2010. Multiple-term searches including “facebook” were up 24% from last year.
The most frequently searched-for public figures were Justin Bieber at No. 1 and Casey Anthony at No. 2.
In the movies category, “Star Wars” — surprisingly — came in at No. 1, followed by “Transformers 3” and the “Breaking Dawn” installment of the “Twilight” series.
