According to a new study by website monitoring service Pingdom, 24.3% of the top 10,000 websites in the world (as reported by Alexa) now feature some form of official Facebook integration on their homepages. That’s already a pretty impressive number, but once you also include basic links to Facebook, the number goes up to 49.3%. The company’s official like button is featured on 7.3% of these sites.
Facebook is clearly becoming a “part of the Web’s DNA,” as Pingdom puts it, and it’s far ahead of its competitors. It’s worth noting, though, that the number of sites that integrate Facebook seems to have remained relatively stable over the last year. Almost exactly one year ago, BrightEdge, for example, reported that it found some form of Facebook integration on about 47% of the Web’s top 10,000 sites.
Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn
In Pingdom’s study, Twitter is only featured on 10% of homepages in the top 10,000. Around 4.3% of these sites use Twitter’s official share button. Despite these relatively low numbers, it’s worth noting that 41.7% of sites feature links to Twitter – a number that isn’t that different from Facebook’s.
As for Google’s social network Google+, which – depending on who you ask – is either hopping with activity or dead – Pingdrom reports that it’s actually doing quite well in terms of homepage integrations. Over 13% of the sites surveyed in this study used Google’s +1 button on their homepages and 12.3% include links to plus.google.com. As Pingdom rightly points out, though, many site owners integrate Google+ to boost their search engine rankings and “this might inflate the numbers a bit since they are not necessarily connected to Google+ from the perspective of the site owners, but rather seen as a means to influence SERP.”
LinkedIn, the other network Pingdom looked at, is far behind the competitions. Just 0.6% of the sites studied here integrate it on their homepage and 0.3% use the social network’s official share button. Even with basic links included the total number of sites integrating LinkedIn is just 3.9%.
Counting all kinds of links and official widgets, here is Pingdom’s final count:
1.Facebook: 49.3%
2.Twitter: 41.7%
3.Google+: 21.5%
4.LinkedIn: 3.9%
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