Facebook accounts for 1 in every 5 pageviews

Summary: Facebook is absolutely dominating in the U.S. Here are some new (and not so new) statistics about the social network that might make you realize just how popular the website really is.

Competitive intelligence service Hitwise decided to get in on the numbers fun everyone has been having thanks to Facebook’s IPO filing. As such, the firm released 10 statistics about Facebook for January 2012. Most of them aren’t too surprising, but number two stood out to me in particular.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the 10 things you should know about Facebook in the U.S., according to Hitwise:

1. Facebook.com captures 1 in every 11 Internet visits (January 2012).


2. 1 in every 5 page views occurs on Facebook.com (January 2012).


3. The average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes (January 2012).


4. Facebook.com’s audience skews slightly more female than the online population as a whole (43 percent male, 57 percent female, 12 weeks ending January 28, 2012).


5. The ages of Facebook.com visitors are indicative of the website’s strength in the marketplace, with relative parity in distribution of its visit share by age vs. the online population (18-24 is 18 percent, 25-34 is 23 percent, 34-44 is 21 percent, 45-54 is 19 percent, and 55+ is 20 percent; 12 weeks ending January 28, 2012).


6. Facebook.com under-indexes in visit share from the most affluent income group (less than $30K is 23 percent, $30K to $59K is 32 percent, $60K to $99K is 26 percent, $100K to $149K is 12 percent, and more than $150K is 6 percent; 12 weeks ending January 28, 2012). With that said, Facebook’s size more than makes up the difference; the site wins 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group versus YouTube’s 223,732,591 visits and Twitter’s 15,166,795 visits.


7. Facebook.com became the #1 ranked website in the U.S. on March 9, 2010.


8. “Facebook” is the most searched term in the U.S. and Facebook-related terms account for 14 percent of the top search clicks (12 weeks ending January 28, 2012).


9. Facebook.com users are highly loyal to the website; 95.91 percent of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012.


10. Internationally, Facebook.com ranks in the top two websites in every market (week ending January 28, 2012) except China, where Sina Weibo, Baidu Zhidao and Renren are the dominant social networks. Facebook.com’s largest footprint is in Canada, capturing almost 12 percent of all visits in that market. It also recently surpassed Orkut, placing it behind only Google Brazil in market share.

“Facebook.com is the largest website in the US and a top performer in numerous international markets,” a Hitwise spokesperson said in a statement. “The fan base of the site is loyal and spends a significant portion of their time online on the social network. Facebook’s influence is seen in the presidential elections, digital shopping habits and beyond.”

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