The 10 Most Searched and Most Visited Websites of 2011

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Strangely, people also use search engines to find other search engines.

Experian Hitwise has released their annual list of the year's most searched terms on search engines and as expected, everyone likes Facebook. The social networking giant topped the list for the third-year running, followed by second-place YouTube which moved up from third place in 2010. Craig's List, eBay and strangely, Mapquest also made the top 10, but dominance of social media search terms is the real take-away. Social networking search terms were by the most commonly searched category, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 terms overall (an increase of 12 percent year over year). However, it is 'Facebook' itself that accounted for the lion's share of that percentage. 3.48 of the top 50 terms are variations on the name, like 'Facebook Login' and 'facebook.com'.

Curiously, two of the top ten search terms are for a search engine: 'Yahoo' and 'yahoo.com' clocked in at 6 and 10 respectively, proving that a lot of people seem to remember a time before Google, but not how to find it. Perhaps they ought to let someone google that for them. The top ten most-searched terms are:

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

Experian Hitwise also tracked the most-visited sites, and as with search-terms, Facebook topped the list. That ought to give another headache to number 2 Google, already wiping egg of its face after news that Facebook is the most popular Android app. While YouTube is in a healthy 3rd place, Gmail ranked 8 while Yahoo Mail came in at number 4. The top ten most visited sites are:

1) Facebook

2) Google

3) YouTube

4) Yahoo Mail

5) Yahoo.com

6) Bing

7) Yahoo search

8) Gmail

9) Mail.live.com

10) MSN

And because it is of the most pressing concern, the top public figure searched for online was Justin Beiber. While this may seem somewhat disturbing in the same year Osama Bin Ladin was killed, we can take consolation in news that he at least beat Charlie Sheen handily. The Tiger Blood crazyman came in at sixth place. The full press release, including data on music searches, movie titles and 'personality searches, is available on Experian's official site.

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Ross A. Lincoln
Ross A. Lincoln
Contributing writer

Ross is a former contributing writer for Tom's Guide based in Los Angeles covering phones, tablets and home networking. Ross has previously written for Deadline, The Los Angeles Times and, most recently, TheWrap.

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36 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ksampanna
    I can't derive the logic behind people searching for facebook.com in search engines. People need to be informed that there is an address bar in their browser to type it in.
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    Yeah I was sure that facebook will come first. Still i was expecting for some torrent sites to be in top 10 (because of a lot of seeds in some movie and game torrents)
    Reply
  • Pyree
    ^Agree. There is also something called bookmark. But hey, the same group of people who google for Facebook probably also google for Justin Beiber.
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    Don't get me worng there is no skype or like that.
    Reply
  • Goldengoose
    And here's me thinking no one used yahoo anymore. Quite a big surprise in fact.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    Opinion: If you require a search engine to find Facebook, you probably shouldn't be using Facebook.
    Reply
  • Probably won't be long before we see the removal of the address bar from all major browsers and the phrase "Type "Toms Hardware" into a search engine" replaces "visit us at tomshardware.com".

    But yes, never quite understood the logic behind typing "www.facebook.com" into Google. Typing "facebook", yes, can get that on the first few visits, but seriously does nobody use bookmarks or favourities anymore?
    Reply
  • madooo12
    ksampannaI can't derive the logic behind people searching for facebook.com in search engines. People need to be informed that there is an address bar in their browser to type it in.they sometimes wright that wrong in the search bar, happens with everyone, maybe browsers should use only one box like IE9, 10, Opera, Chrome
    Reply
  • dontknownotsure
    ksampannaI can't derive the logic behind people searching for facebook.com in search engines. People need to be informed that there is an address bar in their browser to type it in.well search engine guards against lazy typos at the cost of 2 clicks
    Reply
  • makaveli316
    This points out how many are the people who have no idea how to use a browser. They don't know anything about address bar and bookmarks, which is the most simple things in browsing.
    I've seen people who wants to search something in the web and they open the browser and type in the address bar random words with no www or .com or anything, just plain text, for example "what's the fastest car in the world". These are people who don't even know how to make Google as a home page or how to type an address.
    Every time i put hands on someone's computer, i see tons of useless programs starting with windows and tons of useless programs, plug ins, search bars ecc., installed on their system.
    When i check their system, i always find hundreds of registry errors, bunch of gb of space waiting to be cleaned, 30 to 40% hdd fragmentation levels ecc.
    Not to mention, that there's still a big % of users who doesn't have antivirus program installed or doesn't even know what this is.
    Who the hell types "www.facebook.com" or "facebook login" in Google???? Please....
    Reply