The advent of the internet has seen some significant changes in our lifestyles. The internet has become a workplace as well as a place to socialise or find modes of internet. One can also choose the internet as a platform to show off their skills or talent. Anyway, the internet has had an enormous impact on our lives. It has become the most time-consuming activity in our lives through its various features and all the different applications and social media platforms.
Facebook and Google are some of the most well-known technological giants that completely dominate the internet industry. They are as different as they come. Facebook is a social media and networking company that helps people to connect online through its eponymous social media platform.
On the other hand, Google is a search engine service that focuses on quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and online advertising. Both have huge internet user engagement, and this article aims to focus on studying the time spent on internet user engagement on Facebook vs Google.
What is Internet User Engagement?
Measuring online user engagement of Internet user engagement is a method to measure users’ affinity for a particular company’s products or services. Companies such as Facebook and Google often use these statistics to measure how their services are performing and how they measure up to each other or other technological companies.
All companies that operate via the internet have a tried and tested model to calculate their internet user engagement. They take into account the number of clicks, the time spent on the service or its platform, social media user interactions such as paid social media ads, and also web traffic and purchases that they make. All this data is compiled to calculate how much the service engaged the internet users and how well a new feature has performed.
Facebook in terms of internet user engagement
Almost two decades after its introduction, Facebook is still among the world’s top 10 most valued brands. According to statistics, Facebook has about 2.91 billion active monthly users. That’s a significant increase from last year. Over the last decade, the revenue generated by Facebook has increased by almost 2203%. This is a significant figure, which shows that Facebook is still a huge money maker and still leads when it comes to internet user engagement.
Even though there is huge competition for Facebook now, with other social media and internet platforms where people can choose to spend their time instead of Facebook, Facebook still shows that people spend more than half an hour, on average, on Facebook. And that is simply huge. Statistics also showed that the average organic reach of a product via Facebook would be only 5.2% in 2022. That is a decline from the last few years, but even then, it can give businesses a major boost, as 5.2% is still more than many other platforms.
In 2020, the pay-per-click on Facebook was 0.38 USD. A couple of years later, today, it has gone up by 13% to 0.43 USD. It might go up even more by the end of the year, as was the trend in September 2021. All over, Facebook has an advertising reach of around 2.11 billion. It has the highest potential advertisement reach, as it is among the most populous social media platforms. Thus, for those that are seriously looking to expand their business by means of the internet, Facebook can provide a huge boost to their prospects.
When it comes to the global population, advertisements on Facebook reach about 34.1% of the world’s population above 13. Thus, Facebook, even after its collective decline since the introduction of other social media platforms, is still hugely appealing to the younger generation.
Facebook Marketplace was launched in 2016, and it took off instantly. Just four years after its launch, it reached 1 billion active users and is still on course to lead the market. To add to that fact, internet users are more than 50% more likely to buy a product from a live chat, such as Facebook Live.
Thus, these facts make Facebook a forerunner in internet user engagement. Let us take a look at the similar statistics of Google now.
Internet User Engagement of Google
More than three decades after their establishment, Google cemented their place as the premier technological giant in the world. To put things in perspective, Google generated a revenue of 209.4 billion USD in 2021. This figure has seen steady growth in the last years, and Google is still showing growth. The advertising websites of Google generated 177.79 billion USD in 2021. Thus, Google is one of the first names that must come to your mind when you are trying to advertise your business on the internet.
Google is one of the highest-valued brands in the world and keeps on growing every second. Since the first quarter of 2021, Alphabet’s quarterly revenue has steadily increased. Alphabet is the parent company of Google. It reached the peak figure of 75325 million USD in the last quarter of 2021. In the second quarter of 2022, it generated 69,685 million USD. By market value, Alphabet is the fourth most valued company in the world, with a market capitalisation value of 1581.72 billion USD. That puts Alphabet just behind other giants such as Apple and Microsoft.
When it comes to internet user engagement, these previously provided figures speak for themselves as they clearly show that Google engages internet users hugely and is seeing steady growth as a result. Annually, people spend around 213.1 billion hours on Google. Statistics show that Google was the most visited website in January 2022, with 89.3 billion visits. It was the most frequently used search engine as well, with 91.9% of the market share. As can be guessed, all other search engines were far behind.
To put this 91.9% into a clear figure, Google registered about 8.5 billion searches per day. That makes about 99,000 searches every second. Another interesting fact to add to Google’s repertoire when talking about online user engagement is that 46% of all product searches begin on Google. So, when one is trying to buy a product, their search begins on Google and leads them to the proper website.
Google is equally popular on mobile devices as well. Since mobiles are becoming the most commonly used electronic gadgets out there, it is no surprise that Google also leads to mobile searches. To put this statement into a mathematical figure, out of all the total Google organic web search traffic, 63% was from mobile devices. A survey also showed that 84% of internet users Google at least thrice a day.
Thus, from all these facts, it is quite evident that Google simply leads the way when it comes to engaging online users. Google is one of the most reliable platforms to search for products or grow your business. Thus, it should be no surprise that Google’s pay-per-click ads cost about $1-2 USD per click. Google has a huge global reach and can help any business grow and keep users engaged for long enough to sell products or significantly increase web traffic.
The Essential Minutes
Both Facebook and Google rake huge figures in terms of the minutes spent on them by internet users.
- Facebook is the most popular social media app, even after stiff competition from other platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
- On average, internet users spend around 147 minutes daily on social media. On average, 58 minutes are spent on Facebook.
- Even though the popularity of Facebook has taken a hit amongst youngsters, it still dominates the 35-44 year old demographic.
- Americans spend almost 60 billion hours on Google annually. The exact figure is estimated to be around 57.3 billion hours.
- The internet users of the world spend 422 billion users on the big four of the internet every year, namely, Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
- The most time is spent on search engines, which still lead to the greatest growth of businesses and organic web search traffic. And Google leads all the other search engines by quite a distance.
- In 2021, the annual revenue of Google hit a staggering $217 billion, setting a new high for the technological giant.
- Facebook is more popular than Google when it comes to time spent on average.
- Google has about 5.8 billion searches every day, approximately. On the other hand, Facebook has 1.73 billion active users daily.
- When it comes to the buyer intent, Google Ads have the upper hand over Facebook ads. On the other hand, the cost-per-click rate of Google Ads is about $2.69. Facebook Ads are cheaper, at $1.56. This might be attributed to the better reach of Google Ads.
- When it comes to how user-friendly they are, Facebook Ads might seem simpler than Google Ads, but they are more data-driven in terms of User Interface.
Conclusion
Both Facebook and Google have huge reach and are growing every second. However, looking at all the necessary statistics, it is safe to say that Google has the upper hand over Facebook in terms of time spent on internet user engagement on Facebook vs Google.
