Visits to Facebook surpass visits to Google for first time in U.S.

Social-networking giant Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week.

For the week ending March 13, Facebook’s homepage was the most visited site in the country according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The “important milestone,” as described by Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a whopping 185% increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.

Facebook Vs. Google - week ending March 13, 2010 (source: Hitwise)

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased only 9% in the same time — although the tracker does not include other Google properties such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

Taken together, Facebook.com and Google.com amounted to 14% of  all US website visits last week, Dougherty said.

Google has been mounting challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what probably signals an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated only its 6th birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox which could be seen as a competitive play against Google’s Gmail tool.

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