‘Facebook’ tops list of most-searched-for terms of 2011

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‘Facebook’ was the term most frequently searched for by American Internet users in 2011, according to a report from Experian Hitwise, part of the Experian Marketing Group.

In fact, ‘facebook’ dominated Experian’s top ten list, showing up in four different iterations: ‘Facebook login’ was the third most searched for term this year. ‘Facebook.com’ was fifth, and ‘www.facebook.com’ came in eighth.

The full list looks like this:

1. facebook

2. youtube

3. facebook login

4. craigslist

5. facebook.com

6. yahoo

7. ebay

8. www.facebook.com

9. mapquest

10. yahoo.com

This is the third year in a row that ‘facebook’ has topped the list. Searches for that one-word term were up 46% this year from 2010. Multiple-term searches including ‘facebook’ were up 24% from last year.

‘Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar,’ Simon Bradstock, a general manager of Experian Hitwise, said in a statement.

Single-word searches rose 11% users came to expect that their search engine would fill in the rest of the terms for them.

The most frequently searched-for public figures, Experian, said were Justin Bieber at No. 1 and Casey Anthony at No. 2. (Charlie Sheen was No. 6.)

In the movies category, ‘Star Wars’ -- surprisingly -- came in at No. 1, followed by ‘Transformers 3’ and the ‘Breaking Dawn’ installment of the ‘Twilight’ series.

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-- Deborah Netburn