Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, surpassed Google Inc.’s search engine in weekly hits to become the most visited website in the U.S. for the first time, according to research firm Hitwise.
accounted for 7.07 percent of visits in the week ended March 13, topping ‘s 7.03 percent, New York-based Hitwise said Monday in a blog post. Facebook almost tripled its visits from a year earlier, compared with 9 percent growth at Google, the most popular search engine.
Facebook, started in 2004, has lured users by adding games and making it easier to check messages, notifications and friend requests. To compete, Google added a social-networking feature called Buzz to its Gmail e-mail service last month, allowing users to share photos, comments and clips from its YouTube video site.
