By Mary ChildsMarch 17 (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, surpassed Google Inc.’s search engine in weekly hits to become the most visited Web site in the U.S. for the first time, according to research firm Hitwise.
Facebook.com accounted for 7.07 percent of visits in the week ended March 13, topping Google.com’s 7.03 percent, New York-based Hitwise said in a March 15 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. The company is considering building a version that works outside of Gmail.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, climbed $5.39 to $570.59 at 11:43 a.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock market. Before today, the shares had dropped 8.8 percent this year. Closely held Facebook is based in Palo Alto, California.
Google and Facebook representatives didn’t immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment.
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