Facebook has outgrown Google. Love it or hate it, it’s a fact now, as Compete reports that the social networking site generates more traffic for sites like MSN, AOL and Yahoo. And those traffics stats are more than what search engines bring to these websites. No doubt Google amalgamated all its services under the umbrella of Social network; Google Buzz.
The stats provided by Compete are very interesting as well. The social networks combined brought around 15% of all traffic to online portals like Yahoo, AOL and MSN which was twice as much as Google brought [around 7%]. However, of those stats, Facebook was the unchallengeable name as it alone generated 13% of all traffic for these sites combined. I am not going to brag about the stats much and would rather talk about what this means and how significant is all this at present and what it says about the future?
While the stats clearly state that the social networks have taken the cake away but in my opinion that by no way means that the search engines will soon be the talk of the past. I can bet that the only people who would give up on search are those who rely absolutely on recommendations coming along on their social networking profiles. On a larger scale, people would continue to use search engines for most of their time they sent online, meaning that Search will remain a vital part of the Web. The only reason why social networks continue to rapidly expand is because users spend too much time on them as there are so many things they do being on them. The search by far is still one dimensional and that is what it will remain for times to come.
I personally think that Google Buzz is worth an attempt from the search giant to take a leap at Facebook. It brings so much for its users to spend time on and make use of its services/tools. And while it might prove to be good enough, Facebook will continue to bite away traffic from all other sources.
