When I saw a friend invite from Brian Prince today, I thought “wow, maybe it’s time to check Facebook’s traffic standings” and did a quick check on Alexa. Sure enough, as I predicted about this time last year, Facebook (now six) has eclipsed MySpace (now seven), albeit slightly, and temporarily – for now – in the Alexa rankings.
A quick search around the Blogosphere showed me that a few other people had already reported the shift, which looks like it officially took place last week. There were a few things about the stats though that I thought were worth mentioning that I hadn’t seen mentioned elsewhere.
The first is to note the difference in the countries the users come from. In the US, myspace is still the winner. But, Facebook is kicking myspace ass in places like the UK (as Dave noticed a while back), Canada, Egypt, South Africa and more.
See the chart below for a more side by side comparison (the OC stands for other countries which is appears a stat is lumped into if the percentage isn’t at least 0.6%). Myspace wins are in blue and Facebook in purple… yes, I know this isn’t an exact science, but as their so close in Alexa rank, it was worth looking at.
Additionally, take a look at the rankings in the sample countries of both Facebook and myspace when compared to that of Internet giants Google.com and Yahoo.com.
Another interesting thing to check out was the percentage of visitors to Facebook as stated by Alexa vs. the percentage of Facebook’s combined “55 million active users” in each of those countries based on Facebook’s statistics from its social ad service.
But all in all, it would seem Facebook hasn’t eclipsed myspace for very long. According to the end of the graph when shown as a one month graph, you can see Facebook dips below myspace again.
Nonetheless, I’m sure myspace, and its owners, weren’t too happy to see the temporary pass. The question is, how does myspace compete to retain their number one ranking in the social space… if they even can. My other question is with Facebook being a top destination, why haven’t they partnered with a search engine ala CNN to make money on the search ads…
About the Author
Rae Hoffman-Dolan aka "Sugarrae" is an affiliate marketing veteran and an (extremely) occasional Houston SEO consultant specializing in SEO audits and link building strategies. She is also the author of the often controversial Sugarrae blog and the SVP of Marketing for Speedy Incorporation Services. You can connect with Rae via Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to the Sugarrae feed | Follow Sugarrae on Twitter
Related Posts
Sugarrae runs on the Thesis WordPress Theme
If you’re someone who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality that you wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise with a simple control panel instead of having to alter code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
For those "in between", like myself, I’ve created "dummy" guides for Thesis hooks that allow us to make more professional customizations than we ever deemed possible. The theme is not only highly customizable, but it has allowed me to run Sugarrae more professionally, with a much more targeted focus on monetization than it ever has been able to achieve before. You can find out more about Thesis below:
- Thesis Website and Demo
- Thesis Theme Review
- Thesis Tutorial: Hooks for Dummies
- More Thesis Tutorials on Sugarrae
Comments on this entry are closed.