In March 2010, Facebook emerged as the top search term at Google, Bing, and Yahoo according to Experian Hitwise. Bing reported that 2.6% of all searches were dedicated to Facebook with Google at 1.17%.

To say that Facebook is capturing the minds and search boxes of people in the U.S. and around the world would be a gross understatement.

Facebook wasn’t only the top search term in America, again, according to Experian Hitwise, it was also the most visited website for a week in the days ending 2009 and beginning 2010. With an increase of 185% in the last year, Facebook accomplished something truly remarkable, if for only but a moment, it beat Google Search as the top destination online. It should also not go unsaid, that combined, Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits during the week of March 8th, 2010.

However, as a denizen of a global online society, it would be prudent to examine how Facebook performs as a province in the worldwide Web.

In the State of Social Media Around the World published earlier this year, we learned that Facebook emerged as the dominant social network in 100 out of 127 countries measured. Italian new media observer Vincenzo Cosenza created the following graphic to offer a visual representation of Facebook’s rise to global prominence.

Facebook’s stature around the world is indeed remarkable. It is the first truly social media property to garner this prestigious status. Understanding its performance online as a destination rather than as a social network however, offers clearer perspective. With Facebook traffic soaring in the U.S., Pingdom recently analyzed how Facebook performs against other sites around the world using data from Alexa.

Of the top 20 countries sorted by the number of Internet users, Facebook.com earned the top spot in the Philippines and Indonesia, which equates to roughly 5%. Google, in its various flavors, surfaced on top in 14 countries, equaling 70%.

Facebook’s meteoric rise as a social network with over 400 million users has also proven to become a force in the Web overall. In the United States, Facebook is the number 2 site of course. Around the world, Facebook is also gaining ground within the UK (currently #2), Germany (#3), France, (#2), Italy (#2), Spain (#2) and Canada (#2). It’s worthy to note, in China, Facebook is absent from the top 500. With over 300 million users, QQ sits in the top spot as the prime social/mobile network and Baidu ranks number one as the top destination in the country.

Facebook is far from reaching its potential and as its new “Like” architecture hits the WWW with over 50,000 publishers already in place, its 400 million strong army of social curators will only increase its relevance around the world.

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