Barclays Capital recently came out with their February “Internet Data Book.” The report provides up-to-date statistics on the Internet industry overall, and more specifically on the 13 companies in their coverage universe and covers financial metrics and valuation, Internet usage, online advertising, mobile, e-commerce, online travel, and company-specific information and models.
What is interesting about this report is that Facebook, for the first time ever, passed up Google to become the top US-based site for Page Views in January. Facebook traffic was 52 billion page views compared to Google’s traffic of 43 billion page views.
Even more interesting was Facebook’s year-over-year growth rate, which was 172% versus Google’s 27%. Even though, Google is still #1 in visits (Facebook is #4), Facebook’s growth rate there all but assures that it will become the number 1 site in terms of visits in just a matter of months. If you model out the January growth rates, Facebook is set to pass Google for US Visitors by October of this year.
The same trend is happening worldwide, though, it’s going to take more time for Facebook to make up ground there.