This is the first time that Facebook has held the #1 spot for an entire week. They had previously become the top site for a few single days over the past few months.

We recently reported that Barclay Capital’s Internet Data Book showed that Facebook had passed Google in terms of Page Views during the month of January. Based on their much faster growth rate, we predicted that Facebook would become the top site in terms of visits within a few months.

Given that we are only half way through the month, Facebook will likely overtake Google for the top US visited site for the month of March and probably will continue to increase it’s lead for the foreseeable future.

We were recently pointed to this post from last month by Ben Edelman, a Harvard privacy advocate. In it, he details the data the Upromise toolbar collects and sends out. This toolbar is used by college students looking for savings on various items across the web, and can be quite useful. But until a few weeks ago, it appears they were also sending web browsing and more personal data to Compete without anyone’s knowledge.

via How Does Compete Get Its Web Traffic Data? At Least One Way Sounds Very Sketchy.

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.