Top U.S. Web Brands 2011: Google, Facebook Most Visited Sites, Says Nielsen

According to a Nielsen study released on Wednesday, Google was the most-visited U.S. web brand of 2011.

Between January and October of 2011, an average of 153.4 million people visited Google sites per month. This makes sense when you consider that over 60 percent of web searches in the U.S. are done through Google.

Other power brands that topped the list include Yahoo! (3), Bing (4), AOL Media Network (7) and the Ask Search Network, which came in at number 10.

The second place spot went to Facebook, which garnered visits from 137.6 million people per month on average. This was not Facebook's only 2011 accolade. The social networking site was the most-searched term this year and accounted for 4.4 percent of searches in 2011, according to a study by Experian Hitwise.

As Nielsen's Matthew Hurst told The Huffington Post in an email, the brand labels were "meant to reflect how consumers experience the web." This is why the term "Google" includes Google branded sites like Gmail and Google Maps, but does not include YouTube, which is owned by Google but does not carry the Google brand name.

The bundling of same-brand properties is the reason that Google scored the top spot on Nielsen's rankings, while in Hitwise's year-end study, which looked at standalone sites, Facebook came out on top. According to Hitwise, Facebook.com accounted for 10.29 percent of all U.S. visits, while Google.com accounted for 7.7 percent. However, when Hitwise bundled branded properties, as Nielsen did, the results were the same: Google at number one and Facebook at number two.

Check out how many people were visiting your favorite sites every month in our slideshow below.

The year is swiftly drawing to a close, so if you need something to talk about at your New Year's party check out some of our other slideshows like the year's fastest-rising Google search terms, as well as the fastest-rising gadgets on Google, the top searches on Yahoo and the most-searched gadgets on Bing.

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Comments

[mitsecl]

02:05 AM on 01/02/2012

I'm glad AOL stopped sending CD's in the mail...

[Jim8]

12:18 PM on 12/31/2011

I'm hoping someone starts another Youtube, the one Google bought isn't what it should be today.

They paid too much for it, and are trying to get their money back. That, and Google has too much power.

[Jim8]

12:15 PM on 12/31/2011

Remember when they broke up AT&T because some thought they had too much power? Maybe it's past time to break up Google.

[Vik Dhawan]

11:27 AM on 01/02/2012

Completely different scenarios. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (just so we are clear) it is very easy to switch your search engine, you just type in a different competitors same into the address bar and voila you have selected a different provider. You also have to remember a large percentage of internet browsing devices still ship with windows which by default select Bing/live as your default search engine, people go out of their way to get what they perceive is better content or service. AT & T owned the phone lines to your house and you had no easy alternatives. Cheers

[Gigity]

09:03 AM on 12/30/2011

People use Yahoo?

[richj45]

06:57 AM on 01/03/2012

people still use windows ?

[Angilina Rani]

05:00 AM on 12/30/2011

Hollywood’s Big Little Actors
http://hotexclusivephotos.blogspot.com/2011/12/hollywoods-big-little-actors.html

[ResearchtheFacts]

09:14 PM on 12/29/2011

No harm HP with the AOL statement but there has been no new offerings from this company who is still pushing dial up as part of the package. OK, they bought you but they need a serious redesign with marketing approach for those numbers to be believable. My questioning is objective, I have used AOL in the 20th century..

[ResearchtheFacts]

09:09 PM on 12/29/2011

Hard to believe that Yahoo and Aol came in before Apple and I am no Apple fan. But really, it is hard to believe. Come on when was the last time AOL was relevant?

[miles silverberg]

11:43 PM on 12/29/2011

It's probably a cumulative total of hits on all the other websites that they've acquired over the years. I can't think of a reason in this day and age to go to aol.com itself.

[Flight]

10:59 AM on 12/30/2011

When they bought this site and dumped a butt-load of money in Arianna's lap.

[Britishdemocrat]

07:46 PM on 12/29/2011

Facebook and Google are amazing.

[MizLiz]

07:41 PM on 12/29/2011

Google rules. Nothing else comes close. My son gave me one pound of ground elk meat. I didn't know what to do with it, so I googled.."1 lb. ground elk"

Wow, the yummy recipes that popped up....