Facebook leads the charge as Australia’s most popular social network site

Facebook leads the charge as Australia’s most popular social network site

Sydney, Australia, October 2010 – In the lead up to the release of the Facebook movie, The Social Network, Experian Hitwise today reveals data highlighting the patterns and trends of Facebook usage.

The research results from September prove that Facebook.com is clearly Australia’s most popular form of social network accounting for 56.8% of all visits to social network sites. This is almost 3.8 times the visits of YouTube (15.1 per cent share of visits).

During September, Facebook.com was the most visited website for Australian’s aged 18-24 with 8.9 per cent of visits, just ahead of Google.com.au’s 8.96 per cent.  Amongst all Australians Facebook.com was the second most popular website visited by all Australians after Google.com.au, accounting for 7.83 per cent of all visits in the month of September.

Downstream traffic from Facebook.com to retail sites have increased by 14.8 per cent  in the past year with ‘Apparel and Accessories’ and ‘Sport and Fitness’ seeing the largest increases of 75.6 per cent and 59.4 per cent respectively.

These statistics highlight the growing share of voice that Facebook.com is experiencing within the online community. Facebook.com represents almost 1 in 5 pages viewed by all Australian internet users in the month of September.

Additional findings from Experian Hitwise revealed that:

• Facebook.com is the leading search term in each of the major search engines used by Australians – Google.com.au, Google.com, Bing.com and Yahoo! (in the four weeks ending 2 October 2010)
• Facebook Mobile (m.facebook.com) is the sixth most visited social network site
• Females are responsible for 55.8 per cent of all visits, compared to 44.2 per cent from men, despite representing only 52.9 per cent of the online population
• Facebook.com received more traffic from search engines, 9.6 per cent of all traffic, than any other website in the month of September 2010
• The average session time for a user visiting Facebook.com during September 2010 was 28 minutes and 58 seconds
• Facebook.com accounts for 11.3 per cent of all upstream traffic to other websites visited by Australian internet users. This makes it the second largest source of traffic behind Google.com.au (31.7 per cent) and well ahead of ninemsn that generates 3.8 per cent
• Facebook’s share of Australian’s visits to all websites has increased 6-fold over the past three years and continues to take more and more of Australian’s online focus. It has increased share of visits by 29.2 per cent in the past year
• South Australia has the highest use of Facebook.com, when compared to the online population, reflecting a 10 per cent higher propensity to visits to Facebook.com
• NSW generates 32.1 per cent of all Australian based visits to Facebook.com, on par with the online audience profile.
  

About Experian Hitwise research
Experian Hitwise measures a sample size of 3 million Australian Internet users.
The data provided by Experian Hitwise was gathered by aggregating search terms relevant to subject – issue or leader – into portfolios. The growth or decline of the specified search terms were measured on a weekly based. The data represents volume of search as a percentage of all searches by all Australian internet users.
http://www.hitwise.com/au

About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 90 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score, and protect against identity theft.

Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended 31 March 2010 was $3.9 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 40 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; Costa Mesa, California; and São Paulo, Brazil.

For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.