Facebook hits one in six UK page views

Social-networking site Facebook accounted for one in six web pages seen by UK internet users in June, according to new research.

Data released by web analytics firm Hitwise on Monday showed that Facebook had 16.73 percent of all page views, double the tally of Google, which registered 8.22 percent. However, the social-networking site came second to Google in site visits, registering 7.14 percent compared with Google's 9.59 percent.

"Using the measure of total page views rather than visits, Facebook is way ahead," Hitwise research director Robin Goad said in a blog post.

Facebook announced in July that it had surpassed 500 million members worldwide, and the site has 25 million British users, according to Hitwise. Businesses are increasingly encouraging the use of social-networking tools for keeping in touch with customers, according to recent research. In July, for example, the UK division of Domino's Pizza released interim results that put an increase in online sales down to social media efforts.

"Our main Facebook site now has in excess of 36,000 fans, and there are numerous fans of individual store sites too," said chief executive officer Chris Moore in a statement (PDF).

However, Hitwise noted that Facebook's visit and view figures are down from earlier peaks and raised the question as to whether the site had hit a saturation point in the UK.

"Facebook's market share of UK page views has trebled over the last five years, but growth has slowed significantly over the last six months," Goad said.

According to the Hitwise data, the social-networking site saw a slight decline in view share in June, but Goad suggested this could be attributed to a summer slow-down in university and school-based visits.

The web analytics firm said that the reason why Google trails in views despite leading in visits is because it is a jumping-off site, rather than a destination. "Google is probably one of the only websites in the world which is more successful the less time users spend on it," a spokesman from Hitwise said.