I usually ignore claims about how large one web site is versus another. The traffic varies widely, and it seems like every time someone manages to get enough attention to become “BIG!” they slip into obscurity almost as fast as they arrived. But when Facebook became “bigger than Google” this week, I noticed something.
These guys are HUGE.
The research comes from Hitwise. And like most statistically-generated “fact” it’s the kind of information that can be interpreted in many different ways. But underneath it there’s some validity: Google and Facebook each account for over seven percent of all Internet traffic.
I suppose Google serving up one out of every fourteen pages viewed on the Internet shouldn’t really come as a surprise. They’re the largest search engine by a factor of five, and with the Internet having become the world’s de facto technical support, information search, and news source their volume makes sense. But Facebook having just as many hits as Google all by itself? Amazing.
Now as I said earlier, the numbers can be tweaked and twisted, and certainly the methods Hitwise used to come up with the figures can be questioned. But the position that Facebook now occupies is astonishing.
You know where I’m going, don’t you?
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