Facebook shows vast increase from UK users

Social networking drove even more users online in April. According to the newest research from comScore, social sites like Facebook and PhotoBucket pushed more traffic toward social networks.

by Kristina Knight

According to the numbers, Facebook was the top gaining website for UK users, with a 38% increase in traffic. Roughly 3.7 million users logged on. Since March, Facebook has shown a 90% increase in traffic. Social site Bebo.com also showed great improvement with a 6% traffic increase.

The picture sharing site PhotoBucket also showed an increase in April traffic. 2.5 million users visited the site, an increase of 5% over March numbers.

As the summer travel season continued to approach, more users also signed on to travel planning websites. Hotels, travel deals and destination content drove 4% more users to Priceline.com and 9% more users to First Choice Holidays.

As for search engines, Google continued to dominate the search share among UK users (the search giant also dominated US search share). According to comScore, more than 27 million users chose Google. However, Google's number stayed very nearly static compared to the March search share in the UK.

With these numbers, it is clear that social networks are influencing more users than ever. For marketers this is a clear indication that social networks are not simply a passing fancy among users. Including a branded social page or advertising within social networks is a good idea for online marketers.