Is Social Networking the New Google?

The web analytics firm Hitwise’s latest survey is enough to send web search giants like Google in to some serious damage control mode. Studies and survey results show that the trend of users preferring social networking sites over search engines is continuously on the rise and after the US, where Facebook’s overall traffic beat that of Google in March this year, UK is next in line. Hitwise reports say that during the month of May social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, a first time occurrence.

Facebook is the new most popular social networking site in the UK which gets 55% of all SN traffic with Youtube and Twitter coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively. The once immensely popular Myspace was at the bottom of the list.