Facebook surpasses Google as most visited website

San Francisco: Facebook has surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States, according to industry tracker Hitwise. The important milestone, as described by Hitwise Director of Research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 percent increase in visits in the week ending March 13, compared to the same week in 2009, reports Economic Times. 

Visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine percent in the same week. However, the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

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

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.