Geesh! Facebook Sure Gets A Lot of Pageviews

Everyone has watched Facebook grow in popularity and significance over the past year or so. It almost sneaks up on you just how far reaching the social networking site has become. Claiming over 300 million users is impressive enough but some research is showing that there is data to support the claim that Facebook gets 1 out of every 4 pageviews in the US. Holy crap. That’s saying something.

Henry Blodgett at the BusinessInsider

Here’s a startling conclusion by Perry Drake of database marketing firm Drake Direct:

Facebook accounts for 25% of U.S. online pageviews.

Perry’s analysis was prompted by a study showing that the figure in the U.K. is 1 in 7. He pulled some Compete charts and concluded that the number here is 1 in 4.

Google, meanwhile, accounts for 1 in 12 pageviews (8%). And Facebook is rapidly closing in on Google in terms of visits and uniques.

Ok, so my first question was as always, who is Perry Drake. Drake’s bio over at his blog describes him as a consultant (isn’t everyone?) but also notes

In addition to consulting, Perry is an Associate Professor at New York University in the Integrated Marketing Master’s Degree Program. Perry currently teaches various database marketing and web analytics and search optimization classes within the Integrated Master’s degree program and the Digital Marketing program.

So while this isn’t Forrester type research I suspect that this gentleman has done stuff like this before and some of the numbers are a bit startling. Not the least of which concerns the number of unique visitors v Google as evidenced by the chart below. While Google holds a lead the trending must make some folks at the Googleplex a little antsy.

Now, research is what research is. The numbers as collected by Compete need to be assumed accurate and I don’t know to what degree that can be verified or trusted. What can be considered though is the real impact of Facebook. Everyone likes to talk about Twitter but the sheer numbers of Facebook and its more in depth and personal feel make it, in my opinion, the best of the social media arenas. That is purely a personal opinion so you can agree or disagree all you want.

What would be hard to disagree with though is the move that Microsoft made yesterday to try to harness some of this informational firepower. It looks like things are going to get pretty interesting as we move into the age of ‘real time’ search.