Facebook second biggest Web brand in 2011

Facebook was the second biggest Web brand in the US this past year. Furthermore, the service was (unsurprisingly) the most-visited social network and the third online destination for video, according to Nielsen.

For web brands, Google was the most-visited U.S. Web brand in 2011 with 153.44 million Americans visiting the search giant's websites each month. Facebook took second with 137.64 million US visitors each month. Yahoo was third (130.12 million), MSN/WindowsLive/Bing was fourth (115.89 million) and YouTube was fifth (106.69 million).

I find it curious that Nielsen separated YouTube from Google and that Microsoft received a separate entry in sixth place (83.69 million). If these groups were merged, Google would likely be even more ahead in first place, and Microsoft would be in second, pushing Facebook to third (even with all the overlap).

In the social networking and blogs category, Facebook was ahead by a huge margin: more than double everyone else (again 137.64 million US visitors). The runners-up, in order, were as follows: Blogger (45.71 million), Twitter (23.57 million), WordPress (20.36 million), Myspace (17.94 million), LinkedIn (17.02 million), Tumblr (10.88 million), Google+ (8.21 million), Yahoo Pulse (8.06 million), and Six Apart TypePad (7.79 million).

For video, Facebook took third place in 2011. Here are the top 10 Web properties listed by average number of unique U.S. video viewers per month: YouTube (111.15 million), Vevo (34.58 million), Facebook (29.80 million), Yahoo (25.32 million), MSN/WindowsLive/Bing (16.56 million), AOL Media Network (13.33 million), Hulu (13.16 million), The CollegeHumor Network (12.50 million), CNN Digital Network (8.26 million), Netflix (7.42 million).

Just last week, Facebook was declared the top-searched term overall in the US this year, and the second-most visited web property, according to Experian Hitwise. It's worth noting that Nielsen looked at individual visitors per month while Experian Hitwise looked at total visits for the year.

See also:

• Facebook is beating Google in 'the battle for eyeballs'
• Google to Facebook: "We are delighted to be underestimated"
• Zuckerberg: Google, Microsoft collect data "behind your back"
• Facebook is destroying Google in time spent online (chart)
• Google: Facebook is becoming "a closed walled garden"
• Facebook is not 20 times the size of Google+; it's even bigger