Thursday, March 18, 2010

Facebook Generates More Visits Than Google



Facebook has passed Google in terms of frequentation between March 7th to 13th. This is the first time Facebook is more frequented than Google, establishing 7,07% of the overall Internet frequentation, versus 7,03% for the Mountain View firm.

One year ago, Facebook was counting only for 2%, whereas Google has grown by a little 1.03 points. Of course, Google’s search engine market is more mature than Facebook, but this is an important step for web 2.0. Hence, for the first time, its main actor overpassed a 1.0 monster.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.

Facebook has doubled in a year its number of users, from 200 to 400 millions. Now these results only count google.com activities, and occult for example gmail or Google maps results, which if we sum up counts for 11.03%.

Now Google remains way more profitable than Facebook. Moreover, I believe that the operational costs of Google, which is mainly text indexation are far lower than Facebook, which hosts videos, pictures, chatting activities and so on. The main difference in terms of revenue generation capabilities between both is Google’s advertising program which rocks and is way on top of the line. Facebook struggles to propose to advertisers such targeting potential.

Indeed, Google has been able to set up the perfect targeting potential with its Adwords program, and Facebook lacks of know how makes it difficult to get the same kind of return on investments.

This remains a milestone for Facebook and social media, which have hence proven they were able to compete with the largest competitors.