Facebook knocked Google off the top spot last week to become the most visited site in the US in the last 7 days

Research company Hitwise has revealed that Facebook overtook Google and picked up the accolade of most visited website of the week in the US.

This is the first time Facebook have achieved this feat. According to the research from Hitwise, the week ending March 13^th saw Facebook account for 7.07% of the visits during that week in comparison to Google’s 7.03% share.

Facebook, which is now the world’s biggest social networking site, also had other good news to share. Figures revealed recently showed that the amount of visits to Facebook has tripled over the past 12 months, whereas Google has seen a 9% increase.

Since its formation back in 2004, Facebook has enjoyed healthy growth. However the recent surge in visits is likely to be down to some canny moves on behalf of the bosses at Facebook. Now it’s easier than ever for users to access their account, and with the development of mobile phone technology which allows members to use Facebook on the move, the social networking site is reaping the benefits.

Not ones to take defeat lying down, Google have swung into action and have also developed a social networking arm to work in conjunction with their Gmail service. The feature was launched last month and it allows users to upload photos, share comments, and access YouTube videos.

Twitter updates are now searchable through Microsoft's Bing and will soon appear through Google

Just after the news broke that Microsoft would start indexing Twitter updates through their newly launched search engine Bing, Google also revealed that they have plans to follow suit and will also begin delivering status updates from Twitter in the near future.

The real-time Twitter search feature was announced by Microsoft at a web summit in Australia this week. The organisation said they also have plans in the pipeline to start delivering status updates from the other giant in social networking, Facebook.

Microsoft’s Bing is already displaying the Twitter updates. The service brings the user tweets related to a topic typed into a search box taking into account, the author, content, and how many times the tweet has received comments or been re-tweeted. It is not yet known when they will begin delivering the Facebook updates as well.

One of the biggest players from the world of search engines, Google who currently command an estimated 65% of the US market, confirmed that they too have come to an agreement with Twitter and their update service will swing into action in the coming weeks.

Not ones to be left out in the dark, Yahoo! are also believed to be in the process of negotiating a deal with the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Now the yes doesn’t come so easily does it? No, I don’t use Google for everything either, not for every single thing because sometimes I feel like I would be better results if I looked somewhere else, in a different way. Depending on the product or service I’m looking for, before turning to Google, I’ll look in the Yellow Pages, or the local directory under the industry I am looking for.

Doing this kind of search I feel as though I get better results because rather than typing ‘graphic designer’ into Google and coming up with results for companies in Australia, companies which are either too big or too small for what I need, or just results which happen to have ‘graphic designer’ as the keywords, in the Yellow Pages I can judge the size of the companies by the size of the ads, and choose one in my area.

So does my search technique have a fatal flaw or do other people have this problem?