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Peak Facebook

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99 pointsmotters51 comments

I think what we're seeing here is people no longer search for Facebook on Google; they have started going straight to Facebook, with no Google in between. For lots of folks, Facebook is the internet.

Exactly this. As hard as I try to be pro-privacy and anti facebook, it's on ever device I own and bookmarked into the very muscle memory of my hands. Where I used to log onto IRC to see what was happening after work, now it's FB instead.

A few months ago Facebook started aggressively suggesting users make it their homepage. Perhaps this is evidence that campaign worked.

Oh, it was aggressive. The only options that were available when the dialog showed up for me, was to either oblige, or to "Skip".

Are you telling me I get hit with aggressive ads every time I login to my bank account? :(

However, for lots of people the Google search box IS the address bar - this is true in both IE and Chrome.

I don't know about IE, but in Chrome you'd have to work at it to actually search for "facebook" rather than going to facebook.com.

Try it. Type "facebook". Heck, on most folks' machines you can just type "f". It'll auto-complete the URL. If you want to actually google for "facebook" you'll have to type "facebook " with a space.

Actually you just type ?facebook to force it to search. This even works with URLs: ?facebook.com

You may be correct but you're missing the point.

Sorry, it was besides the point, not missing the point though.

but with autocomplete, would they be going directly to the URL? or would it complete a search first?

If you aren't sharing your browsing habits with Google or Microsoft, would this behavior show up?

Also, this won't show a 'change' in behavior over the last few months or a year because the address bar has acted as search for some time already.

This would only be accelerated by the explosion of mobile devices with native facebook apps.

I'm not sure why people always link to search terms when they want the site traffic which is also available on Google Trends.

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com&sa=N

Anyone else find it interesting that you can't get google.com stats?

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=google.com&geo=all&#...

It is because people don't search for "google.com" while they are already on google.com. Google Trends only contains data for large search volume.

I can't be the only person who has mindlessly done that before.

I don't know where I heard this, but I was told that its very common for inexperienced internet users (of which there are many) to search for google in the search bar built into their browser, then click google to search for there.

My parents do that all the time. Often then typing the URL they wanted originally (and knew) in the google.com search bar after.

DONT DO IT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc

I've seen many people type "google" or "google.com" into google's search bar, while on google.com. Then they typed "facebook.com" into the search bar or something silly like that ...

Using "facebook.com" as a search keyword yields a strange result: there is a steady rise until the first days of January 2010 when a sudden drop of ~50% occurs. From then on, the curve remains flat.

Any idea of what happened?

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=facebook.com&sa=N

A guess: some major browser's search bar started to parse "facebook.com" as a domain rather than a search term?

That was my guess too, but which one?

I'm thinking FF 3.6, which came out January 21st. [1] If you zoom in on 2010, you'll see the drop happens around the end of January. [2]

[1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/releasenotes/

[2] http://trends.google.com/trends?q=facebook.com&ctab=0...

Actually now trends.google.com redirects to google.com/trends, which is the form used in the given link.

This is a fun graph too: http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+myspace&ctab=...

In a few minutes of searching, I wasn't able to find a single search term that was more popular that Facebook.

I mean, there has to be something.

Doesn't there?

Closest I can find is YouTube, which was overtaken by Facebook in late 2008. http://trends.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2Cyoutube&cta...

EDIT: "the" was ahead of Facebook as almost-mid 2009.

Doubtful. The last time I was privy to accurate data on the top search terms at a major search engine was almost five years ago, but at that time the most searched-for terms were all names of popular websites. Lots of people use search boxes as URL bars. With Facebook the most popular site in the world, it doesn't surprise me that it would be the top search query.

In terms of traffic, Google is the most popular site in the world, not Facebook. http://www.alexa.com/topsites

This probably has to do with the fact that 'facebook' is the same in every language. Meaning that other popular items that may receive higher search volume are split among many different actual queries.

The closest I could find to 'facebook' was 'youtube' which falls into the same category and comes in at just under half.

I think this is an important thing to consider when people compare the demise of Myspace with what Facebook will face in the future. Myspace was never even a fraction of what Facebook is today, Facebook has achieved "global brand" status because it came along at the perfect time, just as the internet was growing in popularity and becoming "accepted" as something to use Facebook was there, growing and providing something for internet-uninclined people to use, unlike Myspace which was arguably "ahead of the curve" and didn't cater to the average Facebook user. This graph is excellent evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace#International_sites

If half the world uses your product, at some point you'll stop growing...

Looks like Facebook was similarly flat last May - Aug (2010) - this might just be a seasonal thing.

Could be a college student effect, like there used to be on Usenet. It could be that a not-insignificant percentage of Facebook activity is during class on laptops.

That is just how much people search for it. Here is traffic:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com#

Im not sure that a graph showing the number of google searches for facebook indicates anything. When's the last time you googled facebook to log in to your account?

Right. On the flip side, if this data is based as the other article a while ago, on facebook's advertiser's data, then it's not including mobile views.

I'm sure it indicates something.

Google searches are usually somewhat correlated to real-life trends.

I'll bet at least some of the difference in facebook search traffic is offset by the rise in popularity of mobile devices. Most people with mobile devices have an app to go to and would be less likely to search 'facebook'.

You'll be surprised at how many non-hackers google for it. People even google for "ebay.com", and domain names rather than typing it in the browser URL bar.

And don't forget that Firefox sends address bar input that doesn't look like an URL to Google's I Feel Lucky search. That's why a significant part of the Mozilla Foundation's income comes from Google.

I think you'd be surprised at how many hackers enjoy the conveniences of Google search for a known url.

All the time. Well, not me personally, but many of the "normals" I know Google for Facebook rather than typing it in the URL bar. Remember the ReadWriteWeb "Facebook Login" event last February? [1] [2]

[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login

[2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_google_failed_inter...

The demographic that googles "facebook" can easily have different behavior patterns from people who type in the URL.

Peak Facebook for Turkey, maybe. The US-only link at http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook&ctab=0&geo=u... still seems like it's growing.

Actually, looking at the top five countries in the geo breakdown, Facebook is dropping in a lot of places in the world. Not sure what's going on there.

Comparing the US and worldwide graphs, they appear quite similar to me. The world graph has a strong rise mid-2010, where it raises above the US line for the first time. Then, they both level out with some jig-jogs shortly before the start of 2011.

Of course we're at Peak Facebook. Practically every internet user in the country is on Facebook, and a good fraction of the world.

If that's Peak Facebook then Peak Oil occurred in 2010: http://www.google.com/trends?q=oil

I've always hated facebook

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