Social networks now receive more UK Internet visits than search engines. During May, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%. May was the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK.
Facebook accounts for 55% of all UK social networking visits, almost three times as many as the next most popular social network, YouTube. Twitter, one of the fastest growing and most talked about websites of the last two years, is now the third most popular social network in the UK, putting it ahead of former favourites such as Bebo and MySpace.
However, despite its popularity Facebook doesn’t yet dominate the UK social networking market to the extent that Google dominates the search market. Together www.google.co.uk and www.google.com accounted for nine in every ten web searches carried out in the UK during May. Consequently Google UK was the most visited website in the UK during May, accounting for 9.29% of all visits. Facebook, in second place, accounted for 7.04% of all UK Internet visits during the same month.
