Facebook most searched-for word in 2011 in US: study

It is the second year when the social networking giant has had four top ten slots.

The top ten U.S. search terms for 2011 included four variations on Facebook Facebook.com,Facebook,Facebook login and http://www.facebook.com,a web-monitoring firm has revealed.

It is the second year when the social networking giant has had four top ten slots.

According to Experian Hitwise,the overall searches for Facebook accounted for 4.42 per cent of searches – a 24 per cent increase in a year.

Other web giants such as YouTube made up the rest of the top ten.

The study revealed that most people preferred to search rather than type in an address.

The habit of typing in favourite websites,rather than entering them in the address bar,is partly driven by predictive search,where Google or other search engines fill in search terms as one types.

Its way easier to search rather than type in a web address that might not work.

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Its also much easier on mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets,where typing and navigating can be difficult.

In the UK in particular,people are keen on brevity – unlike the US,the abbreviation FB – made the top ten for the first time this year.

Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the U.S. results,accounting for 4.18 per cent of the top 50 searches.

Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar, the Daily Mail quoted Simon Bradstock,general manager of Experian Hitwise as saying.

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Its a result of predictive search functions across major search engines, he added.

The results are hugely different from charts such as Googles Zeitgeist,because Google structures their reports to cut out searches for websites.

The top 10 most searched for terms for 2011 in US were:

Facebook

YouTube

Facebook login

Craigslist

Facebook.com

Yahoo

eBay

http://www.facebook.com