The most searched term and the most visited website of 2011 were, drum roll, Facebook. Garnering almost half of the top ten search terms (specifically four, those being ‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’, ‘facebook.com’, and ‘www.facebook.com’), this is the third year in a row that the world’s largest social network has been the most searched term overall, accounting for 3.1 percent of all searches online, an impressive 46 percent increase from 2010. A certain Mark Zuckerberg out there must be quite pleased with himself right now.

The top ten most searched terms of 2011:

1. Facebook 2. YouTube 3. Facebook Login 4. Craigslist 5. Facebook.com 6. Yahoo 7. eBay 8. www.facebook.com 9. Mapquest 10. Yahoo.com

The Experian Hitwise report stated that among the top 10 terms, “Facebook login” was the third most-searched term in 2011, followed by “craigslist” and “facebook.com.” Facebook.com jumped up one spot in 2011 to be among the top five search terms. When combined, general search terms for Facebook, i.e., facebook and facebook.com, accounted for 3.48 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a full 33 percent increase from last year. These are some impressive stats, no doubt, for any website, much less the largest social networking website in the world.

Perhaps more significant, and an even larger blow to Google (and all their forays into social networking), is that the social network was again the most-visited website of the year. From January to November 2011, Facebook drew 10.29 percent of all internet visits in the United States, according to data from Experian Hitwise. That’s more than 10 percent of the entire US. Impressive, much?