Facebook more popular than Google in US and Canada

For the first time, Google has been knocked to second place in the race to see which website receives the most hits in a given week. According to international research firm Hitwise, Facebook received more hits than Google last week in the United States, thus becoming the country’s most popular website. But while Facebook just managed to climb to first place on its home turf last week, the social networking giant had already trounced Google before in Canada, where it has been the most visited site for the past nine months. Accorging to Hitwise, 7.07 percent of all online visits went to Facebook, while Google’s proportion stood at 7.03 percent. Interestingly, however, Facebook is even more popular in Canada, where it received 10.4 percent of all website visits, with Google lagging behind at 8.48 percent.

Matt Tatham, Hitwise’s spokesperson, could not offer a clear explanation as to why Facebook was so noticeably more popular in Canada than in the States. One theory floated by Tatham is that the ability to share photos easily among family and friends may have given Facebook the edge in a vast country, where travel from one point to another can be very expensive.

One of the reasons why Facebook is growing internationally is that it managed to expand its service last year by offering users a range of popular games. The site is also changing it message system to make it more closely resemble e-mail and to allow users to comment without actually having to log on to Facebook. The social networking site nearly tripled its share of hits last year.